huxley brave new world

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BRAVE NEW WORLD

by

Aldous Huxley

CHAPTER ONE

A SQUAT grey building of only thirty-four stories. Overthe main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY ANDCONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State'smotto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.

The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards thenorth. Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all thetropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glaredthrough the windows, hungrily seeking some draped layfigure, some pallid shape of academic goose-flesh, butfinding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shiningporcelain of a laboratory. Wintriness responded towintriness. The overalls of the workers were white, theirhands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber. The lightwas frozen, dead, a ghost. Only from the yellow barrels ofthe microscopes did it borrow a certain rich and livingsubstance, lying along the polished tubes like butter,streak after luscious streak in long recession down the worktables.

"And this," said the Director opening the door, "is theFertilizing Room."

Bent over their instruments, three hundred Fertilizers wereplunged, as the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioningentered the room, in the scarcely breathing silence, theabsent-minded, soliloquizing hum or whistle, of absorbedconcentration. A troop of newly arrived students, veryyoung, pink and callow, followed nervously, rather abjectly,at the Director's heels. Each of them carried a notebook, inwhich, whenever the great man spoke, he desperatelyscribbled. Straight from the horse's mouth. It was a rareprivilege. The D. H. C. for Central London always made apoint of personally conducting his new students round thevarious departments.

"Just to give you a general idea," he would explain to them.For of course some sort of general idea they must have, ifthey were to do their work intelligently–though as little ofone, if they were to be good and happy members of society,as possible. For particulars, as every one knows, make forvirtue and happiness; generalities are intellectuallynecessary evils. Not philosophers but fret-sawyers and stampcollectors compose the backbone of society.

"To-morrow," he would add, smiling at them with a slightlymenacing geniality, "you'll be settling down to seriouswork. You won't have time for generalities. Meanwhile …"

Meanwhile, it was a privilege. Straight from the horse'smouth into the notebook. The boys scribbled like mad.


Tall and rather thin but upright, the Director advanced intothe room. He had a long chin and big rather prominent teeth,just covered, when he was not talking, by his full, floridlycurved lips. Old, young? Thirty? Fifty? Fifty-five? It washard to say. And anyhow the question didn't arise; in thisyear of stability, A. F. 632, it didn't occur to you to askit.

"I shall begin at the beginning," said the D.H.C. and themore zealous students recorded his intention in theirnotebooks: Begin at the beginning. "These," he waved hishand, "are the incubators." And opening an insulated door heshowed them racks upon racks of numbered test-tubes. "Theweek's supply of ova. Kept," he explained, "at blood heat;whereas the male gametes," and here he opened another door,"they have to be kept at thirty-five instead ofthirty-seven. Full blood heat sterilizes." Rams wrapped intheremogene beget no lambs.

Still leaning against the incubators he gave them, while thepencils scurried illegibly across the pages, a briefdescription of the modern fertilizing process; spoke first,of course, of its surgical introduction–"the operationundergone voluntarily for the good of Society, not tomention the fact that it carries a bonus amounting to sixmonths' salary"; continued with some account of thetechnique for preserving the excised ovary alive andactively developing; passed on to a consideration of optimumtemperature, salinity, viscosity; referred to the liquor inwhich the detached and ripened eggs were kept; and, leadinghis charges to the work tables, actually showed them howthis liquor was drawn off from the test-tubes; how it waslet out drop by drop onto the specially warmed slides of themicroscopes; how the eggs which it contained were inspectedfor abnormalities, counted and transferred to a porousreceptacle; how (and he now took them to watch theoperation) this receptacle was immersed in a warm bouilloncontaining free-swimming spermatozoa–at a minimumconcentration of one hundred thousand per cubic centimetre,he insisted; and how, after ten minutes, the container waslifted out of the liquor and its contents re-examined; how,if any of the eggs remained unfertilized, it was againimmersed, and, if necessary, yet again; how the fertilizedova went back to the incubators; where the Alphas and Betasremained until definitely bottled; while the Gammas, Deltasand Epsilons were brought out again, after only thirty-sixhours, to undergo Bokanovsky's Process.

"Bokanovsky's Process," repeated the Director, and thestudents underlined the words in their little notebooks.

One egg, one embryo, one adult-normality. But abokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide.From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow intoa perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into afull-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow whereonly one grew before. Progress.

"Essentially," the D.H.C. concluded, "bokanovskificationconsists of a series of arrests of development. We check the


normal growth and, paradoxically enough, the egg responds bybudding."

Responds by budding. The pencils were busy.

He pointed. On a very slowly moving band a rack-full oftest-tubes was entering a large metal box, another,rack-full was emerging. Machinery faintly purred. It tookeight minutes for the tubes to go through, he told them.Eight minutes of hard X-rays being about as much as an eggcan stand. A few died; of the rest, the least susceptibledivided into two; most put out four buds; some eight; allwere returned to the incubators, where the buds began todevelop; then, after two days, were suddenly chilled,chilled and checked. Two, four, eight, the buds in theirturn budded; and having budded were dosed almost to deathwith alcohol; consequently burgeoned again and havingbudded–bud out of bud out of bud–were thereafter–furtherarrest being generally fatal–left to develop in peace. Bywhich time the original egg was in a fair way to becominganything from eight to ninety-six embryos– a prodigiousimprovement, you will agree, on nature. Identical twins–butnot in piddling twos and threes as in the old viviparousdays, when an egg would sometimes accidentally divide;actually by dozens, by scores at a time.

"Scores," the Director repeated and flung out his arms, asthough he were distributing largesse. "Scores."

But one of the students was fool enough to ask where theadvantage lay.

"My good boy!" The Director wheeled sharply round on him."Can't you see? Can't you see?" He raised a hand; hisexpression was solemn. "Bokanovsky's Process is one of themajor instruments of social stability!"

Major instruments of social stability.

Standard men and women; in uniform batches. The whole of asmall factory staffed with the products of a singlebokanovskified egg.

"Ninety-six identical twins working ninety-six identicalmachines!" The voice was almost tremulous with enthusiasm."You really know where you are. For the first time inhistory." He quoted the planetary motto. "Community,Identity, Stability." Grand words. "If we could bokanovskifyindefinitely the whole problem would be solved."

Solved by standard Gammas, unvarying Deltas, uniformEpsilons. Millions of identical twins. The principle of massproduction at last applied to biology.

"But, alas," the Director shook his head, "we can'tbokanovskify indefinitely."

Ninety-six seemed to be the limit; seventy-two a goodaverage. From the same ovary and with gametes of the same


male to manufacture as many batches of identical twins aspossible–that was the best (sadly a second best) that theycould do. And even that was difficult.

"For in nature it takes thirty years for two hundred eggs toreach maturity. But our business is to stabilize thepopulation at this moment, here and now. Dribbling out twinsover a quarter of a century–what would be the use of that?"

Obviously, no use at all. But Podsnap's Technique hadimmensely accelerated the process of ripening. They couldmake sure of at least a hundred and fifty mature eggs withintwo years. Fertilize and bokanovskify–in other words,multiply by seventy-two–and you get an average of nearlyeleven thousand brothers and sisters in a hundred and fiftybatches of identical twins, all within two years of the sameage.

"And in exceptional cases we can make one ovary yield usover fifteen thousand adult individuals."

Beckoning to a fair-haired, ruddy young man who happened tobe passing at the moment. "Mr. Foster," he called. The ruddyyoung man approached. "Can you tell us the record for asingle ovary, Mr. Foster?"

"Sixteen thousand and twelve in this Centre," Mr. Fosterreplied without hesitation. He spoke very quickly, had avivacious blue eye, and took an evident pleasure in quotingfigures. "Sixteen thousand and twelve; in one hundred andeighty-nine batches of identicals. But of course they'vedone much better," he rattled on, "in some of the tropicalCentres. Singapore has often produced over sixteen thousandfive hundred; and Mombasa has actually touched the seventeenthousand mark. But then they have unfair advantages. Youshould see the way a negro ovary responds to pituitary! It'squite astonishing, when you're used to working with Europeanmaterial. Still," he added, with a laugh (but the light ofcombat was in his eyes and the lift of his chin waschallenging), "still, we mean to beat them if we can. I'mworking on a wonderful Delta-Minus ovary at this moment.Only just eighteen months old. Over twelve thousand sevenhundred children already, either decanted or in embryo. Andstill going strong. We'll beat them yet."

"That's the spirit I like!" cried the Director, and clappedMr. Foster on the shoulder. "Come along with us, and givethese boys the benefit of your expert knowledge."

Mr. Foster smiled modestly. "With pleasure." They went.

In the Bottling Room all was harmonious bustle and orderedactivity. Flaps of fresh sow's peritoneum ready cut to theproper size came shooting up in little lifts from the OrganStore in the sub-basement. Whizz and then, click! thelift-hatches hew open; the bottle-liner had only to reachout a hand, take the flap, insert, smooth-down, and beforethe lined bottle had had time to travel out of reach alongthe endless band, whizz, click! another flap of peritoneumhad shot up from the depths, ready to be slipped into yetanother bottle, the next of that slow interminableprocession on the band.


Next to the Liners stood the Matriculators. The processionadvanced; one by one the eggs were transferred from theirtest-tubes to the larger containers; deftly the peritoneallining was slit, the morula dropped into place, the salinesolution poured in … and already the bottle had passed, andit was the turn of the labellers. Heredity, date offertilization, membership of Bokanovsky Group–details weretransferred from test-tube to bottle. No longer anonymous,but named, identified, the procession marched slowly on; onthrough an opening in the wall, slowly on into the SocialPredestination Room.

"Eighty-eight cubic metres of card-index," said Mr. Fosterwith relish, as they entered.

"Containing all the relevant information," added theDirector.

"Brought up to date every morning."

"And co-ordinated every afternoon."

"On the basis of which they make their calculations."

"So many individuals, of such and such quality," said Mr.Foster.

"Distributed in such and such quantities."

"The optimum Decanting Rate at any given moment."

"Unforeseen wastages promptly made good."

"Promptly," repeated Mr. Foster. "If you knew the amount ofovertime I had to put in after the last Japaneseearthquake!" He laughed goodhumouredly and shook his head.

"The Predestinators send in their figures to theFertilizers."

"Who give them the embryos they ask for."

"And the bottles come in here to be predestined in detail."

"After which they are sent down to the Embryo Store."

"Where we now proceed ourselves."

And opening a door Mr. Foster led the way down a staircaseinto the basement.

The temperature was still tropical. They descended into athickening twilight. Two doors and a passage with a doubleturn insured the cellar against any possible infiltration ofthe day.

"Embryos are like photograph film," said Mr. Fosterwaggishly, as he pushed open the second door. "They can onlystand red light."


And in effect the sultry darkness into which the studentsnow followed him was visible and crimson, like the darknessof closed eyes on a summer's afternoon. The bulging flanksof row on receding row and tier above tier of bottlesglinted with innumerable rubies, and among the rubies movedthe dim red spectres of men and women with purple eyes andall the symptoms of lupus. The hum and rattle of machineryfaintly stirred the air.

"Give them a few figures, Mr. Foster," said the Director,who was tired of talking.

Mr. Foster was only too happy to give them a few figures.

Two hundred and twenty metres long, two hundred wide, tenhigh. He pointed upwards. Like chickens drinking, thestudents lifted their eyes towards the distant ceiling.

Three tiers of racks: ground floor level, first gallery,second gallery.

The spidery steel-work of gallery above gallery faded awayin all directions into the dark. Near them three red ghostswere busily unloading demijohns from a moving staircase.

The escalator from the Social Predestination Room.

Each bottle could be placed on one of fifteen racks, eachrack, though you couldn't see it, was a conveyor travelingat the rate of thirty-three and a third centimetres an hour.Two hundred and sixty-seven days at eight metres a day. Twothousand one hundred and thirty-six metres in all. Onecircuit of the cellar at ground level, one on the firstgallery, half on the second, and on the two hundred andsixty-seventh morning, daylight in the Decanting Room.Independent existence–so called.

"But in the interval," Mr. Foster concluded, "we've managedto do a lot to them. Oh, a very great deal." His laugh wasknowing and triumphant.

"That's the spirit I like," said the Director once more."Let's walk around. You tell them everything, Mr. Foster."

Mr. Foster duly told them.

Told them of the growing embryo on its bed of peritoneum.Made them taste the rich blood surrogate on which it fed.Explained why it had to be stimulated with placentin andthyroxin. Told them of the corpus luteum extract. Showedthem the jets through which at every twelfth metre from zeroto 2040 it was automatically injected. Spoke of thosegradually increasing doses of pituitary administered duringthe final ninety-six metres of their course. Described theartificial maternal circulation installed in every bottle atMetre 112; showed them the reservoir of blood-surrogate, thecentrifugal pump that kept the liquid moving over theplacenta and drove it through the synthetic lung and wasteproduct filter. Referred to the embryo's troublesometendency to anæmia, to the massive doses of hog's stomachextract and foetal foal's liver with which, in consequence,it had to be supplied.


Showed them the simple mechanism by means of which, duringthe last two metres out of every eight, all the embryos weresimultaneously shaken into familiarity with movement. Hintedat the gravity of the so-called "trauma of decanting," andenumerated the precautions taken to minimize, by a suitabletraining of the bottled embryo, that dangerous shock. Toldthem of the test for sex carried out in the neighborhood ofMetre 200. Explained the system of labelling–a T for themales, a circle for the females and for those who weredestined to become freemartins a question mark, black on awhite ground.

"For of course," said Mr. Foster, "in the vast majority ofcases, fertility is merely a nuisance. One fertile ovary intwelve hundred–that would really be quite sufficient for ourpurposes. But we want to have a good choice. And of courseone must always have an enormous margin of safety. So weallow as many as thirty per cent of the female embryos todevelop normally. The others get a dose of male sex-hormoneevery twenty-four metres for the rest of the course. Result:they're decanted as freemartins–structurally quite normal(except," he had to admit, "that they do have the slightesttendency to grow beards), but sterile. Guaranteed sterile.Which brings us at last," continued Mr. Foster, "out of therealm of mere slavish imitation of nature into the much moreinteresting world of human invention."

He rubbed his hands. For of course, they didn't contentthemselves with merely hatching out embryos: any cow coulddo that.

"We also predestine and condition. We decant our babies associalized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as futuresewage workers or future …" He was going to say "futureWorld controllers," but correcting himself, said "futureDirectors of Hatcheries," instead.

The D.H.C. acknowledged the compliment with a smile.

They were passing Metre 320 on Rack 11. A young Beta-Minusmechanic was busy with screw-driver and spanner on theblood-surrogate pump of a passing bottle. The hum of theelectric motor deepened by fractions of a tone as he turnedthe nuts. Down, down … A final twist, a glance at therevolution counter, and he was done. He moved two paces downthe line and began the same process on the next pump.

"Reducing the number of revolutions per minute," Mr. Fosterexplained. "The surrogate goes round slower; thereforepasses through the lung at longer intervals; therefore givesthe embryo less oxygen. Nothing like oxygen-shortage forkeeping an embryo below par." Again he rubbed his hands.

"But why do you want to keep the embryo below par?" asked aningenuous student.

"Ass!" said the Director, breaking a long silence. "Hasn'tit occurred to you that an Epsilon embryo must have anEpsilon environment as well as an Epsilon heredity?"


It evidently hadn't occurred to him. He was covered withconfusion.

"The lower the caste," said Mr. Foster, "the shorter theoxygen." The first organ affected was the brain. After thatthe skeleton. At seventy per cent of normal oxygen you gotdwarfs. At less than seventy eyeless monsters.

"Who are no use at all," concluded Mr. Foster.

Whereas (his voice became confidential and eager), if theycould discover a technique for shortening the period ofmaturation what a triumph, what a benefaction to Society!

"Consider the horse."

They considered it.

Mature at six; the elephant at ten. While at thirteen a manis not yet sexually mature; and is only full-grown attwenty. Hence, of course, that fruit of delayed development,the human intelligence.

"But in Epsilons," said Mr. Foster very justly, "we don'tneed human intelligence."

Didn't need and didn't get it. But though the Epsilon mindwas mature at ten, the Epsilon body was not fit to work tilleighteen. Long years of superfluous and wasted immaturity.If the physical development could be speeded up till it wasas quick, say, as a cow's, what an enormous saving to theCommunity!

"Enormous!" murmured the students. Mr. Foster's enthusiasmwas infectious.

He became rather technical; spoke of the abnormal endocrineco-ordination which made men grow so slowly; postulated agerminal mutation to account for it. Could the effects ofthis germinal mutation be undone? Could the individualEpsilon embryo be made a revert, by a suitable technique, tothe normality of dogs and cows? That was the problem. And itwas all but solved.

Pilkington, at Mombasa, had produced individuals who weresexually mature at four and full-grown at six and a half. Ascientific triumph. But socially useless. Six-year-old menand women were too stupid to do even Epsilon work. And theprocess was an all-or-nothing one; either you failed tomodify at all, or else you modified the whole way. They werestill trying to find the ideal compromise between adults oftwenty and adults of six. So far without success. Mr. Fostersighed and shook his head.

Their wanderings through the crimson twilight had broughtthem to the neighborhood of Metre 170 on Rack 9. From thispoint onwards Rack 9 was enclosed and the bottle performedthe remainder of their journey in a kind of tunnel,interrupted here and there by openings two or three metreswide.

"Heat conditioning," said Mr. Foster.


Hot tunnels alternated with cool tunnels. Coolness waswedded to discomfort in the form of hard X-rays. By the timethey were decanted the embryos had a horror of cold. Theywere predestined to emigrate to the tropics, to be miner andacetate silk spinners and steel workers. Later on theirminds would be made to endorse the judgment of their bodies."We condition them to thrive on heat," concluded Mr. Foster."Our colleagues upstairs will teach them to love it."

"And that," put in the Director sententiously, "that is thesecret of happiness and virtue–liking what you've got to do.All conditioning aims at that: making people like theirunescapable social destiny."

In a gap between two tunnels, a nurse was delicately probingwith a long fine syringe into the gelatinous contents of apassing bottle. The students and their guides stood watchingher for a few moments in silence.

"Well, Lenina," said Mr. Foster, when at last she withdrewthe syringe and straightened herself up.

The girl turned with a start. One could see that, for allthe lupus and the purple eyes, she was uncommonly pretty.

"Henry!" Her smile flashed redly at him–a row of coralteeth.

"Charming, charming," murmured the Director and, giving hertwo or three little pats, received in exchange a ratherdeferential smile for himself.

"What are you giving them?" asked Mr. Foster, making histone very professional.

"Oh, the usual typhoid and sleeping sickness."

"Tropical workers start being inoculated at Metre 150," Mr.Foster explained to the students. "The embryos still havegills. We immunize the fish against the future man'sdiseases." Then, turning back to Lenina, "Ten to five on theroof this afternoon," he said, "as usual."

"Charming," said the Director once more, and, with a finalpat, moved away after the others.

On Rack 10 rows of next generation's chemical workers werebeing trained in the toleration of lead, caustic soda, tar,chlorine. The first of a batch of two hundred and fiftyembryonic rocket-plane engineers was just passing the elevenhundred metre mark on Rack 3. A special mechanism kept theircontainers in constant rotation. "To improve their sense ofbalance," Mr. Foster explained. "Doing repairs on theoutside of a rocket in mid-air is a ticklish job. We slackenoff the circulation when they're right way up, so thatthey're half starved, and double the flow of surrogate whenthey're upside down. They learn to associate topsy-turvydomwith well-being; in fact, they're only truly happy whenthey're standing on their heads.

"And now," Mr. Foster went on, "I'd like to show you some


very interesting conditioning for Alpha Plus Intellectuals.We have a big batch of them on Rack 5. First Gallery level,"he called to two boys who had started to go down to theground floor.

"They're round about Metre 900," he explained. "You can'treally do any useful intellectual conditioning till thefoetuses have lost their tails. Follow me."

But the Director had looked at his watch. "Ten to three," hesaid. "No time for the intellectual embryos, I'm afraid. Wemust go up to the Nurseries before the children havefinished their afternoon sleep."

Mr. Foster was disappointed. "At least one glance at theDecanting Room," he pleaded.

"Very well then." The Director smiled indulgently. "Just oneglance."

CHAPTER TWO

MR. FOSTER was left in the Decanting Room. The D.H.C. andhis students stepped into the nearest lift and were carriedup to the fifth floor.

INFANT NURSERIES. NEO-PAVLOVIAN CONDITIONING ROOMS,announced the notice board.

The Director opened a door. They were in a large bare room,very bright and sunny; for the whole of the southern wallwas a single window. Half a dozen nurses, trousered andjacketed in the regulation white viscose-linen uniform,their hair aseptically hidden under white caps, were engagedin setting out bowls of roses in a long row across thefloor. Big bowls, packed tight with blossom. Thousands ofpetals, ripe-blown and silkily smooth, like the cheeks ofinnumerable little cherubs, but of cherubs, in that brightlight, not exclusively pink and Aryan, but also luminouslyChinese, also Mexican, also apoplectic with too much blowingof celestial trumpets, also pale as death, pale with theposthumous whiteness of marble.

The nurses stiffened to attention as the D.H.C. came in.

"Set out the books," he said curtly.

In silence the nurses obeyed his command. Between the rosebowls the books were duly set out–a row of nursery quartosopened invitingly each at some gaily coloured image of beastor fish or bird.

"Now bring in the children."

They hurried out of the room and returned in a minute ortwo, each pushing a kind of tall dumb-waiter laden, on allits four wire-netted shelves, with eight-month-old babies,all exactly alike (a Bokanovsky Group, it was evident) andall (since their caste was Delta) dressed in khaki.


"Put them down on the floor."

The infants were unloaded.

"Now turn them so that they can see the flowers and books."

Turned, the babies at once fell silent, then began to crawltowards those clusters of sleek colours, those shapes so gayand brilliant on the white pages. As they approached, thesun came out of a momentary eclipse behind a cloud. Theroses flamed up as though with a sudden passion from within;a new and profound significance seemed to suffuse theshining pages of the books. From the ranks of the crawlingbabies came little squeals of excitement, gurgles andtwitterings of pleasure.

The Director rubbed his hands. "Excellent!" he said. "Itmight almost have been done on purpose."

The swiftest crawlers were already at their goal. Smallhands reached out uncertainly, touched, grasped, unpetalingthe transfigured roses, crumpling the illuminated pages ofthe books. The Director waited until all were happily busy.Then, "Watch carefully," he said. And, lifting his hand, hegave the signal.

The Head Nurse, who was standing by a switchboard at theother end of the room, pressed down a little lever.

There was a violent explosion. Shriller and ever shriller, asiren shrieked. Alarm bells maddeningly sounded.

The children started, screamed; their faces were distortedwith terror.

"And now," the Director shouted (for the noise wasdeafening), "now we proceed to rub in the lesson with a mildelectric shock."

He waved his hand again, and the Head Nurse pressed a secondlever. The screaming of the babies suddenly changed itstone. There was something desperate, almost insane, aboutthe sharp spasmodic yelps to which they now gave utterance.Their little bodies twitched and stiffened; their limbsmoved jerkily as if to the tug of unseen wires.

"We can electrify that whole strip of floor," bawled theDirector in explanation. "But that's enough," he signalledto the nurse.

The explosions ceased, the bells stopped ringing, the shriekof the siren died down from tone to tone into silence. Thestiffly twitching bodies relaxed, and what had become thesob and yelp of infant maniacs broadened out once more intoa normal howl of ordinary terror.

"Offer them the flowers and the books again."

The nurses obeyed; but at the approach of the roses, at themere sight of those gaily-coloured images of pussy andcock-a-doodle-doo and baa-baa black sheep, the infantsshrank away in horror, the volume of their howling suddenly


increased.

"Observe," said the Director triumphantly, "observe."

Books and loud noises, flowers and electric shocks–alreadyin the infant mind these couples were compromisingly linked;and after two hundred repetitions of the same or a similarlesson would be wedded indissolubly. What man has joined,nature is powerless to put asunder.

"They'll grow up with what the psychologists used to call an'instinctive' hatred of books and flowers. Reflexesunalterably conditioned. They'll be safe from books andbotany all their lives." The Director turned to his nurses."Take them away again."

Still yelling, the khaki babies were loaded on to theirdumb-waiters and wheeled out, leaving behind them the smellof sour milk and a most welcome silence.

One of the students held up his hand; and though he couldsee quite well why you couldn't have lower-cast peoplewasting the Community's time over books, and that there wasalways the risk of their reading something which mightundesirably decondition one of their reflexes, yet … well,he couldn't understand about the flowers. Why go to thetrouble of making it psychologically impossible for Deltasto like flowers?

Patiently the D.H.C. explained. If the children were made toscream at the sight of a rose, that was on grounds of higheconomic policy. Not so very long ago (a century orthereabouts), Gammas, Deltas, even Epsilons, had beenconditioned to like flowers–flowers in particular and wildnature in general. The idea was to make them want to begoing out into the country at every available opportunity,and so compel them to consume transport.

"And didn't they consume transport?" asked the student.

"Quite a lot," the D.H.C. replied. "But nothing else."

Primroses and landscapes, he pointed out, have one gravedefect: they are gratuitous. A love of nature keeps nofactories busy. It was decided to abolish the love ofnature, at any rate among the lower classes; to abolish thelove of nature, but not the tendency to consume transport.For of course it was essential that they should keep ongoing to the country, even though they hated it. The problemwas to find an economically sounder reason for consumingtransport than a mere affection for primroses andlandscapes. It was duly found.

"We condition the masses to hate the country," concluded theDirector. "But simultaneously we condition them to love allcountry sports. At the same time, we see to it that allcountry sports shall entail the use of elaborate apparatus.So that they consume manufactured articles as well astransport. Hence those electric shocks."

"I see," said the student, and was silent, lost in


admiration.

There was a silence; then, clearing his throat, "Once upon atime," the Director began, "while our Ford was still onearth, there was a little boy called Reuben Rabinovitch.Reuben was the child of Polish-speaking parents."

The Director interrupted himself. "You know what Polish is,I suppose?"

"A dead language."

"Like French and German," added another student, officiouslyshowing off his learning.

"And 'parent'?" questioned the D.H.C.

There was an uneasy silence. Several of the boys blushed.They had not yet learned to draw the significant but oftenvery fine distinction between smut and pure science. One, atlast, had the courage to raise a hand.

"Human beings used to be …" he hesitated; the blood rushedto his cheeks. "Well, they used to be viviparous."

"Quite right." The Director nodded approvingly.

"And when the babies were decanted …"

"'Born,'" came the correction.

"Well, then they were the parents–I mean, not the babies, ofcourse; the other ones." The poor boy was overwhelmed withconfusion.

"In brief," the Director summed up, "the parents were thefather and the mother." The smut that was really sciencefell with a crash into the boys' eye-avoiding silence."Mother," he repeated loudly rubbing in the science; and,leaning back in his chair, "These," he said gravely, "areunpleasant facts; I know it. But then most historical factsare unpleasant."

He returned to Little Reuben–to Little Reuben, in whoseroom, one evening, by an oversight, his father and mother(crash, crash!) happened to leave the radio turned on.

("For you must remember that in those days of grossviviparous reproduction, children were always brought up bytheir parents and not in State Conditioning Centres.")

While the child was asleep, a broadcast programme fromLondon suddenly started to come through; and the nextmorning, to the astonishment of his crash and crash (themore daring of the boys ventured to grin at one another),Little Reuben woke up repeating word for word a long lectureby that curious old writer ("one of the very few whose workshave been permitted to come down to us"), George BernardShaw, who was speaking, according to a well-authenticatedtradition, about his own genius. To Little Reuben's wink andsnigger, this lecture was, of course, perfectlyincomprehensible and, imagining that their child had


suddenly gone mad, they sent for a doctor. He, fortunately,understood English, recognized the discourse as that whichShaw had broadcasted the previous evening, realized thesignificance of what had happened, and sent a letter to themedical press about it.

"The principle of sleep-teaching, or hypnopædia, had beendiscovered." The D.H.C. made an impressive pause.

The principle had been discovered; but many, many years wereto elapse before that principle was usefully applied.

"The case of Little Reuben occurred only twenty-three yearsafter Our Ford's first T-Model was put on the market." (Herethe Director made a sign of the T on his stomach and all thestudents reverently followed suit.) "And yet …"

Furiously the students scribbled. "Hypnopædia, first usedofficially in A.F. 214. Why not before? Two reasons. (a) …"

"These early experimenters," the D.H.C. was saying, "were onthe wrong track. They thought that hypnopædia could be madean instrument of intellectual education …"

(A small boy asleep on his right side, the right arm stuckout, the right hand hanging limp over the edge of the bed.Through a round grating in the side of a box a voice speakssoftly.

"The Nile is the longest river in Africa and the second inlength of all the rivers of the globe. Although fallingshort of the length of the Mississippi-Missouri, the Nile isat the head of all rivers as regards the length of itsbasin, which extends through 35 degrees of latitude …"

At breakfast the next morning, "Tommy," some one says, "doyou know which is the longest river in Africa?" A shaking ofthe head. "But don't you remember something that begins: TheNile is the …"

"The - Nile - is - the - longest - river - in - Africa - and- the - second - in - length - of - all - the - rivers - of- the - globe …" The words come rushing out. "Although -falling - short - of …"

"Well now, which is the longest river in Africa?"

The eyes are blank. "I don't know."

"But the Nile, Tommy."

"The - Nile - is - the - longest - river - in - Africa - and- second …"

"Then which river is the longest, Tommy?"

Tommy burst into tears. "I don't know," he howls.)

That howl, the Director made it plain, discouraged theearliest investigators. The experiments were abandoned. Nofurther attempt was made to teach children the length of the


Nile in their sleep. Quite rightly. You can't learn ascience unless you know what it's all about.

"Whereas, if they'd only started on moral education," saidthe Director, leading the way towards the door. The studentsfollowed him, desperately scribbling as they walked and allthe way up in the lift. "Moral education, which ought never,in any circumstances, to be rational."

"Silence, silence," whispered a loud speaker as they steppedout at the fourteenth floor, and "Silence, silence," thetrumpet mouths indefatigably repeated at intervals downevery corridor. The students and even the Director himselfrose automatically to the tips of their toes. They wereAlphas, of course, but even Alphas have been wellconditioned. "Silence, silence." All the air of thefourteenth floor was sibilant with the categoricalimperative.

Fifty yards of tiptoeing brought them to a door which theDirector cautiously opened. They stepped over the thresholdinto the twilight of a shuttered dormitory. Eighty cotsstood in a row against the wall. There was a sound of lightregular breathing and a continuous murmur, as of very faintvoices remotely whispering.

A nurse rose as they entered and came to attention beforethe Director.

"What's the lesson this afternoon?" he asked.

"We had Elementary Sex for the first forty minutes," sheanswered. "But now it's switched over to Elementary ClassConsciousness."

The Director walked slowly down the long line of cots. Rosyand relaxed with sleep, eighty little boys and girls laysoftly breathing. There was a whisper under every pillow.The D.H.C. halted and, bending over one of the little beds,listened attentively.

"Elementary Class Consciousness, did you say? Let's have itrepeated a little louder by the trumpet."

At the end of the room a loud speaker projected from thewall. The Director walked up to it and pressed a switch.

"… all wear green," said a soft but very distinct voice,beginning in the middle of a sentence, "and Delta Childrenwear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children.And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be ableto read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such abeastly colour. I'm so glad I'm a Beta."

There was a pause; then the voice began again.

"Alpha children wear grey They work much harder than we do,because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfulyglad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then weare much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are


stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki.Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. AndEpsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able …"

The Director pushed back the switch. The voice was silent.Only its thin ghost continued to mutter from beneath theeighty pillows.

"They'll have that repeated forty or fifty times more beforethey wake; then again on Thursday, and again on Saturday. Ahundred and twenty times three times a week for thirtymonths. After which they go on to a more advanced lesson."

Roses and electric shocks, the khaki of Deltas and a whiffof asafœtida–wedded indissolubly before the child can speak.But wordless conditioning is crude and wholesale; cannotbring home the finer distinctions, cannot inculcate the morecomplex courses of behaviour. For that there must be words,but words without reason. In brief, hypnopædia.

"The greatest moralizing and socializing force of all time."

The students took it down in their little books. Straightfrom the horse's mouth.

Once more the Director touched the switch.

"… so frightfully clever," the soft, insinuating,indefatigable voice was saying, "I'm really awfully glad I'ma Beta, because …"

Not so much like drops of water, though water, it is true,can wear holes in the hardest granite; rather, drops ofliquid sealing-wax, drops that adhere, incrust, incorporatethemselves with what they fall on, till finally the rock isall one scarlet blob.

"Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions, and thesum of the suggestions is the child's mind. And not thechild's mind only. The adult's mind too–all his life long.The mind that judges and desires and decides–made up ofthese suggestions. But all these suggestions are oursuggestions!" The Director almost shouted in his triumph."Suggestions from the State." He banged the nearest table."It therefore follows …"

A noise made him turn round.

"Oh, Ford!" he said in another tone, "I've gone and wokenthe children."

CHAPTER THREE

OUTSIDE, in the garden, it was playtime. Naked in the warmJune sunshine, six or seven hundred little boys and girlswere running with shrill yells over the lawns, or playingball games, or squatting silently in twos and threes amongthe flowering shrubs. The roses were in bloom, two


nightingales soliloquized in the boskage, a cuckoo was justgoing out of tune among the lime trees. The air was drowsywith the murmur of bees and helicopters.

The Director and his students stood for a short timewatching a game of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy. Twenty childrenwere grouped in a circle round a chrome steel tower. A ballthrown up so as to land on the platform at the top of thetower rolled down into the interior, fell on a rapidlyrevolving disk, was hurled through one or other of thenumerous apertures pierced in the cylindrical casing, andhad to be caught.

"Strange," mused the Director, as they turned away, "strangeto think that even in Our Ford's day most games were playedwithout more apparatus than a ball or two and a few sticksand perhaps a bit of netting. imagine the folly of allowingpeople to play elaborate games which do nothing whatever toincrease consumption. It's madness. Nowadays the Controllerswon't approve of any new game unless it can be shown that itrequires at least as much apparatus as the most complicatedof existing games." He interrupted himself.

"That's a charming little group," he said, pointing.

In a little grassy bay between tall clumps of Mediterraneanheather, two children, a little boy of about seven and alittle girl who might have been a year older, were playing,very gravely and with all the focussed attention ofscientists intent on a labour of discovery, a rudimentarysexual game.

"Charming, charming!" the D.H.C. repeated sentimentally.

"Charming," the boys politely agreed. But their smile wasrather patronizing. They had put aside similar childishamusements too recently to be able to watch them now withouta touch of contempt. Charming? but it was just a pair ofkids fooling about; that was all. Just kids.

"I always think," the Director was continuing in the samerather maudlin tone, when he was interrupted by a loudboo-hooing.

From a neighbouring shrubbery emerged a nurse, leading bythe hand a small boy, who howled as he went. Ananxious-looking little girl trotted at her heels.

"What's the matter?" asked the Director.

The nurse shrugged her shoulders. "Nothing much," sheanswered. "It's just that this little boy seems ratherreluctant to join in the ordinary erotic play. I'd noticedit once or twice before. And now again to-day. He startedyelling just now …"

"Honestly," put in the anxious-looking little girl, "Ididn't mean to hurt him or anything. Honestly."

"Of course you didn't, dear," said the nurse reassuringly."And so," she went on, turning back to the Director, "I'mtaking him in to see the Assistant Superintendent of


Psychology. Just to see if anything's at all abnormal."

"Quite right," said the Director. "Take him in. You stayhere, little girl," he added, as the nurse moved away withher still howling charge. "What's your name?"

"Polly Trotsky."

"And a very good name too," said the Director. "Run away nowand see if you can find some other little boy to play with."

The child scampered off into the bushes and was lost tosight.

"Exquisite little creature!" said the Director, lookingafter her. Then, turning to his students, "What I'm going totell you now," he said, "may sound incredible. But then,when you're not accustomed to history, most facts about thepast do sound incredible."

He let out the amazing truth. For a very long period beforethe time of Our Ford, and even for some generationsafterwards, erotic play between children had been regardedas abnormal (there was a roar of laughter); and not onlyabnormal, actually immoral (no!): and had therefore beenrigorously suppressed.

A look of astonished incredulity appeared on the faces ofhis listeners. Poor little kids not allowed to amusethemselves? They could not believe it.

"Even adolescents," the D.H.C. was saying, "even adolescentslike yourselves …"

"Not possible!"

"Barring a little surreptitious auto-erotism andhomosexuality–absolutely nothing."

"Nothing?"

"In most cases, till they were over twenty years old."

"Twenty years old?" echoed the students in a chorus of louddisbelief.

"Twenty," the Director repeated. "I told you that you'd findit incredible."

"But what happened?" they asked. "What were the results?"

"The results were terrible." A deep resonant voice brokestartlingly into the dialogue.

They looked around. On the fringe of the little group stooda stranger–a man of middle height, black-haired, with ahooked nose, full red lips, eyes very piercing and dark."Terrible," he repeated.

The D.H.C. had at that moment sat down on one of the steel


and rubber benches conveniently scattered through thegardens; but at the sight of the stranger, he sprang to hisfeet and darted forward, his hand outstretched, smiling withall his teeth, effusive.

"Controller! What an unexpected pleasure! Boys, what are youthinking of? This is the Controller; this is his fordship,Mustapha Mond."

In the four thousand rooms of the Centre the four thousandelectric clocks simultaneously struck four. Discarnatevoices called from the trumpet mouths.

"Main Day-shift off duty. Second Day-shift take over. MainDay-shift off …"

In the lift, on their way up to the changing rooms, HenryFoster and the Assistant Director of Predestination ratherpointedly turned their backs on Bernard Marx from thePsychology Bureau: averted themselves from that unsavouryreputation.

The faint hum and rattle of machinery still stirred thecrimson air in the Embryo Store. Shifts might come and go,one lupus-coloured face give place to another; majesticallyand for ever the conveyors crept forward with their load offuture men and women.

Lenina Crowne walked briskly towards the door.

His fordship Mustapha Mond! The eyes of the salutingstudents almost popped out of their heads. Mustapha Mond!The Resident Controller for Western Europe! One of the TenWorld Controllers. One of the Ten … and he sat down on thebench with the D.H.C., he was going to stay, to stay, yes,and actually talk to them … straight from the horse's mouth.Straight from the mouth of Ford himself.

Two shrimp-brown children emerged from a neighbouringshrubbery, stared at them for a moment with large,astonished eyes, then returned to their amusements among theleaves.

"You all remember," said the Controller, in his strong deepvoice, "you all remember, I suppose, that beautiful andinspired saying of Our Ford's: History is bunk. History," herepeated slowly, "is bunk."

He waved his hand; and it was as though, with an invisiblefeather wisk, he had brushed away a little dust, and thedust was Harappa, was Ur of the Chaldees; some spider-webs,and they were Thebes and Babylon and Cnossos and Mycenae.Whisk. Whisk–and where was Odysseus, where was Job, wherewere Jupiter and Gotama and Jesus? Whisk–and those specks ofantique dirt called Athens and Rome, Jerusalem and theMiddle Kingdom–all were gone. Whisk–the place where Italyhad been was empty. Whisk, the cathedrals; whisk, whisk,King Lear and the Thoughts of Pascal. Whisk, Passion; whisk,Requiem; whisk, Symphony; whisk …


"Going to the Feelies this evening, Henry?" enquired theAssistant Predestinator. "I hear the new one at the Alhambrais first-rate. There's a love scene on a bearskin rug; theysay it's marvellous. Every hair of the bear reproduced. Themost amazing tactual effects."

"That's why you're taught no history," the Controller wassaying. "But now the time has come …"

The D.H.C. looked at him nervously. There were those strangerumours of old forbidden books hidden in a safe in theController's study. Bibles, poetry–Ford knew what.

Mustapha Mond intercepted his anxious glance and the cornersof his red lips twitched ironically.

"It's all right, Director," he said in a tone of faintderision, "I won't corrupt them."

The D.H.C. was overwhelmed with confusion.

Those who feel themselves despised do well to lookdespising. The smile on Bernard Marx's face wascontemptuous. Every hair on the bear indeed!

"I shall make a point of going," said Henry Foster.

Mustapha Mond leaned forward, shook a finger at them. "Justtry to realize it," he said, and his voice sent a strangethrill quivering along their diaphragms. "Try to realizewhat it was like to have a viviparous mother."

That smutty word again. But none of them dreamed, this time,of smiling.

"Try to imagine what 'living with one's family' meant."

They tried; but obviously without the smallest success.

"And do you know what a 'home' was?"

They shook their heads.

From her dim crimson cellar Lenina Crowne shot up seventeenstories, turned to the right as she stepped out of the lift,walked down a long corridor and, opening the door markedGIRLS' DRESSING-ROOM, plunged into a deafening chaos of armsand bosoms and underclothing. Torrents of hot water weresplashing into or gurgling out of a hundred baths. Rumblingand hissing, eighty vibro-vacuum massage machines weresimultaneously kneading and sucking the firm and sunburntflesh of eighty superb female specimens. Every one wastalking at the top of her voice. A Synthetic Music machinewas warbling out a super-cornet solo.

"Hullo, Fanny," said Lenina to the young woman who had thepegs and locker next to hers.

Fanny worked in the Bottling Room, and her surname was also


Crowne. But as the two thousand million inhabitants of theplant had only ten thousand names between them, thecoincidence was not particularly surprising.

Lenina pulled at her zippers-downwards on the jacket,downwards with a double-handed gesture at the two that heldtrousers, downwards again to loosen her undergarment. Stillwearing her shoes and stockings, she walked off towards thebathrooms.

Home, home–a few small rooms, stiflingly over-inhabited by aman, by a periodically teeming woman, by a rabble of boysand girls of all ages. No air, no space; an understerilizedprison; darkness, disease, and smells.

(The Controller's evocation was so vivid that one of theboys, more sensitive than the rest, turned pale at the meredescription and was on the point of being sick.)

Lenina got out of the bath, toweled herself dry, took holdof a long flexible tube plugged into the wall, presented thenozzle to her breast, as though she meant to commit suicide,pressed down the trigger. A blast of warmed air dusted herwith the finest talcum powder. Eight different scents andeau-de-Cologne were laid on in little taps over thewash-basin. She turned on the third from the left, dabbedherself with chypre and, carrying her shoes and stockings inher hand, went out to see if one of the vibro-vacuummachines were free.

And home was as squalid psychically as physically.Psychically, it was a rabbit hole, a midden, hot with thefrictions of tightly packed life, reeking with emotion. Whatsuffocating intimacies, what dangerous, insane, obscenerelationships between the members of the family group!Maniacally, the mother brooded over her children (herchildren) … brooded over them like a cat over its kittens;but a cat that could talk, a cat that could say, "My baby,my baby," over and over again. "My baby, and oh, oh, at mybreast, the little hands, the hunger, and that unspeakableagonizing pleasure! Till at last my baby sleeps, my babysleeps with a bubble of white milk at the corner of hismouth. My little baby sleeps …"

"Yes," said Mustapha Mond, nodding his head, "you may wellshudder."

"Who are you going out with to-night?" Lenina asked,returning from the vibro-vac like a pearl illuminated fromwithin, pinkly glowing.

"Nobody."

Lenina raised her eyebrows in astonishment.

"I've been feeling rather out of sorts lately," Fannyexplained. "Dr. Wells advised me to have a Pregnancy


Substitute."

"But, my dear, you're only nineteen. The first PregnancySubstitute isn't compulsory till twenty-one."

"I know, dear. But some people are better if they beginearlier. Dr. Wells told me that brunettes with widepelvises, like me, ought to have their first PregnancySubstitute at seventeen. So I'm really two years late, nottwo years early." She opened the door of her locker andpointed to the row of boxes and labelled phials on the uppershelf.

"SYRUP OF CORPUS LUTEUM," Lenina read the names aloud."OVARIN, GUARANTEED FRESH: NOT TO BE USED AFTER AUGUST 1ST,A.F. 632. MAMMARY GLAND EXTRACT: TO BE TAKEN THREE TIMESDAILY, BEFORE MEALS, WITH A LITTLE WATER. PLACENTIN: 5cc TOBE INJECTED INTRAVENALLY EVERY THIRD DAY … Ugh!" Leninashuddered. "How I loathe intravenals, don't you?"

"Yes. But when they do one good …" Fanny was a particularlysensible girl.

Our Ford–or Our Freud, as, for some inscrutable reason, hechose to call himself whenever he spoke of psychologicalmatters–Our Freud had been the first to reveal the appallingdangers of family life. The world was full of fathers–wastherefore full of misery; full of mothers–therefore of everykind of perversion from sadism to chastity; full ofbrothers, sisters, uncles, aunts–full of madness andsuicide.

"And yet, among the savages of Samoa, in certain islands offthe coast of New Guinea …"

The tropical sunshine lay like warm honey on the nakedbodies of children tumbling promiscuously among the hibiscusblossoms. Home was in any one of twenty palm-thatchedhouses. In the Trobriands conception was the work ofancestral ghosts; nobody had ever heard of a father.

"Extremes," said the Controller, "meet. For the good reasonthat they were made to meet."

"Dr. Wells says that a three months' Pregnancy Substitutenow will make all the difference to my health for the nextthree or four years."

"Well, I hope he's right," said Lenina. "But, Fanny, do youreally mean to say that for the next three months you're notsupposed to …"

"Oh no, dear. Only for a week or two, that's all. I shallspend the evening at the Club playing Musical Bridge. Isuppose you're going out?"

Lenina nodded.

"Who with?"


"Henry Foster."

"Again?" Fanny's kind, rather moon-like face took on anincongruous expression of pained and disapprovingastonishment. "Do you mean to tell me you're still going outwith Henry Foster?"

Mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. But there werealso husbands, wives, lovers. There were also monogamy andromance.

"Though you probably don't know what those are," saidMustapha Mond.

They shook their heads.

Family, monogamy, romance. Everywhere exclusiveness, anarrow channelling of impulse and energy.

"But every one belongs to every one else," he concluded,citing the hypnopædic proverb.

The students nodded, emphatically agreeing with a statementwhich upwards of sixty-two thousand repetitions in the darkhad made them accept, not merely as true, but as axiomatic,self-evident, utterly indisputable.

"But after all," Lenina was protesting, "it's only aboutfour months now since I've been having Henry."

"Only four months! I like that. And what's more," Fanny wenton, pointing an accusing finger, "there's been nobody elseexcept Henry all that time. Has there?"

Lenina blushed scarlet; but her eyes, the tone of her voiceremained defiant. "No, there hasn't been any one else," sheanswered almost truculently. "And I jolly well don't see whythere should have been."

"Oh, she jolly well doesn't see why there should have been,"Fanny repeated, as though to an invisible listener behindLenina's left shoulder. Then, with a sudden change of tone,"But seriously," she said, "I really do think you ought tobe careful. It's such horribly bad form to go on and on likethis with one man. At forty, or thirty-five, it wouldn't beso bad. But at your age, Lenina! No, it really won't do. Andyou know how strongly the D.H.C. objects to anything intenseor long-drawn. Four months of Henry Foster, without havinganother man–why, he'd be furious if he knew …"

"Think of water under pressure in a pipe." They thought ofit. "I pierce it once," said the Controller. "What a jet!"

He pierced it twenty times. There were twenty piddlinglittle fountains.

"My baby. My baby …!"


"Mother!" The madness is infectious.

"My love, my one and only, precious, precious …"

Mother, monogamy, romance. High spurts the fountain; fierceand foamy the wild jet. The urge has but a single outlet. Mylove, my baby. No wonder these poor pre-moderns were mad andwicked and miserable. Their world didn't allow them to takethings easily, didn't allow them to be sane, virtuous,happy. What with mothers and lovers, what with theprohibitions they were not conditioned to obey, what withthe temptations and the lonely remorses, what with all thediseases and the endless isolating pain, what with theuncertainties and the poverty–they were forced to feelstrongly. And feeling strongly (and strongly, what was more,in solitude, in hopelessly individual isolation), how couldthey be stable?

"Of course there's no need to give him up. Have somebodyelse from time to time, that's all. He has other girls,doesn't he?"

Lenina admitted it.

"Of course he does. Trust Henry Foster to be the perfectgentleman–always correct. And then there's the Director tothink of. You know what a stickler …"

Nodding, "He patted me on the behind this afternoon," saidLenina.

"There, you see!" Fanny was triumphant. "That shows what hestands for. The strictest conventionality."

"Stability," said the Controller, "stability. Nocivilization without social stability. No social stabilitywithout individual stability." His voice was a trumpet.Listening they felt larger, warmer.

The machine turns, turns and must keep on turning–for ever.It is death if it stands still. A thousand millionsscrabbled the crust of the earth. The wheels began to turn.In a hundred and fifty years there were two thousandmillions. Stop all the wheels. In a hundred and fifty weeksthere are once more only a thousand millions; a thousandthousand thousand men and women have starved to death.

Wheels must turn steadily, but cannot turn untended. Theremust be men to tend them, men as steady as the wheels upontheir axles, sane men, obedient men, stable in contentment.

Crying: My baby, my mother, my only, only love groaning: Mysin, my terrible God; screaming with pain, muttering withfever, bemoaning old age and poverty–how can they tend thewheels? And if they cannot tend the wheels … The corpses ofa thousand thousand thousand men and women would be hard tobury or burn.


"And after all," Fanny's tone was coaxing, "it's not asthough there were anything painful or disagreeable abouthaving one or two men besides Henry. And seeing that youought to be a little more promiscuous …"

"Stability," insisted the Controller, "stability. The primaland the ultimate need. Stability. Hence all this."

With a wave of his hand he indicated the gardens, the hugebuilding of the Conditioning Centre, the naked childrenfurtive in the undergrowth or running across the lawns.

Lenina shook her head. "Somehow," she mused, "I hadn't beenfeeling very keen on promiscuity lately. There are timeswhen one doesn't. Haven't you found that too, Fanny?"

Fanny nodded her sympathy and understanding. "But one's gotto make the effort," she said, sententiously, "one's got toplay the game. After all, every one belongs to every oneelse."

"Yes, every one belongs to every one else," Lenina repeatedslowly and, sighing, was silent for a moment; then, takingFanny's hand, gave it a little squeeze. "You're quite right,Fanny. As usual. I'll make the effort."

Impulse arrested spills over, and the flood is feeling, theflood is passion, the flood is even madness: it depends onthe force of the current, the height and strength of thebarrier. The unchecked stream flows smoothly down itsappointed channels into a calm well-being. (The embryo ishungry; day in, day out, the blood-surrogate pumpunceasingly turns its eight hundred revolutions a minute.The decanted infant howls; at once a nurse appears with abottle of external secretion. Feeling lurks in that intervalof time between desire and its consummation. Shorten thatinterval, break down all those old unnecessary barriers.

"Fortunate boys!" said the Controller. "No pains have beenspared to make your lives emotionally easy–to preserve you,so far as that is possible, from having emotions at all."

"Ford's in his flivver," murmured the D.H.C. "All's wellwith the world."

"Lenina Crowne?" said Henry Foster, echoing the AssistantPredestinator's question as he zipped up his trousers. "Oh,she's a splendid girl. Wonderfully pneumatic. I'm surprisedyou haven't had her."

"I can't think how it is I haven't," said the AssistantPredestinator. "I certainly will. At the first opportunity."

From his place on the opposite side of the changing-roomaisle, Bernard Marx overheard what they were saying andturned pale.


"And to tell the truth," said Lenina, "I'm beginning to getjust a tiny bit bored with nothing but Henry every day." Shepulled on her left stocking. "Do you know Bernard Marx?" sheasked in a tone whose excessive casualness was evidentlyforced.

Fanny looked startled. "You don't mean to say …?"

"Why not? Bernard's an Alpha Plus. Besides, he asked me togo to one of the Savage Reservations with him. I've alwayswanted to see a Savage Reservation."

"But his reputation?"

"What do I care about his reputation?"

"They say he doesn't like Obstacle Golf."

"They say, they say," mocked Lenina.

"And then he spends most of his time by himself–alone."There was horror in Fanny's voice.

"Well, he won't be alone when he's with me. And anyhow, whyare people so beastly to him? I think he's rather sweet."She smiled to herself; how absurdly shy he had been!Frightened almost–as though she were a World Controller andhe a Gamma-Minus machine minder.

"Consider your own lives," said Mustapha Mond. "Has any ofyou ever encountered an insurmountable obstacle?"

The question was answered by a negative silence.

"Has any of you been compelled to live through a longtime-interval between the consciousness of a desire and itsfufilment?"

"Well," began one of the boys, and hesitated.

"Speak up," said the D.H.C. "Don't keep his fordshipwaiting."

"I once had to wait nearly four weeks before a girl I wantedwould let me have her."

"And you felt a strong emotion in consequence?"

"Horrible!"

"Horrible; precisely," said the Controller. "Our ancestorswere so stupid and short-sighted that when the firstreformers came along and offered to deliver them from thosehorrible emotions, they wouldn't have anything to do withthem."

"Talking about her as though she were a bit of meat."Bernard ground his teeth. "Have her here, have her there."Like mutton. Degrading her to so much mutton. She said she'd


think it over, she said she'd give me an answer this week.Oh, Ford, Ford, Ford." He would have liked to go up to themand hit them in the face–hard, again and again.

"Yes, I really do advise you to try her," Henry Foster wassaying.

"Take Ectogenesis. Pfitzner and Kawaguchi had got the wholetechnique worked out. But would the Governments look at it?No. There was something called Christianity. Women wereforced to go on being viviparous."

"He's so ugly!" said Fanny.

"But I rather like his looks."

"And then so small." Fanny made a grimace; smallness was sohorribly and typically low-caste.

"I think that's rather sweet," said Lenina. "One feels onewould like to pet him. You know. Like a cat."

Fanny was shocked. "They say somebody made a mistake when hewas still in the bottle–thought he was a Gamma and putalcohol into his blood-surrogate. That's why he's sostunted."

"What nonsense!" Lenina was indignant.

"Sleep teaching was actually prohibited in England. Therewas something called liberalism. Parliament, if you knowwhat that was, passed a law against it. The records survive.Speeches about liberty of the subject. Liberty to beinefficient and miserable. Freedom to be a round peg in asquare hole."

"But, my dear chap, you're welcome, I assure you. You'rewelcome." Henry Foster patted the Assistant Predestinator onthe shoulder. "Every one belongs to every one else, afterall."

One hundred repetitions three nights a week for four years,thought Bernard Marx, who was a specialist on hypnopædia.Sixty-two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth.Idiots!

"Or the Caste System. Constantly proposed, constantlyrejected. There was something called democracy. As thoughmen were more than physico-chemically equal."

"Well, all I can say is that I'm going to accept hisinvitation."

Bernard hated them, hated them. But they were two, they were


large, they were strong.

"The Nine Years' War began in A.F. 141."

"Not even if it were true about the alcohol in hisblood-surrogate."

"Phosgene, chloropicrin, ethyl iodoacetate,diphenylcyanarsine, trichlormethyl, chloroformate,dichlorethyl sulphide. Not to mention hydrocyanic acid."

"Which I simply don't believe," Lenina concluded.

"The noise of fourteen thousand aeroplanes advancing in openorder. But in the Kurfurstendamm and the EighthArrondissement, the explosion of the anthrax bombs is hardlylouder than the popping of a paper bag."

"Because I do want to see a Savage Reservation."

Ch3C6H2(NO2)3+Hg(CNO)2=well, what? An enormous hole in theground, a pile of masonry, some bits of flesh and mucus, afoot, with the boot still on it, flying through the air andlanding, flop, in the middle of the geraniums–the scarletones; such a splendid show that summer!

"You're hopeless, Lenina, I give you up."

"The Russian technique for infecting water supplies wasparticularly ingenious."

Back turned to back, Fanny and Lenina continued theirchanging in silence.

"The Nine Years' War, the great Economic Collapse. There wasa choice between World Control and destruction. Betweenstability and …"

"Fanny Crowne's a nice girl too," said the AssistantPredestinator.

In the nurseries, the Elementary Class Consciousness lessonwas over, the voices were adapting future demand to futureindustrial supply. "I do love flying," they whispered, "I dolove flying, I do love having new clothes, I do love …"


"Liberalism, of course, was dead of anthrax, but all thesame you couldn't do things by force."

"Not nearly so pneumatic as Lenina. Oh, not nearly."

"But old clothes are beastly," continued the untiringwhisper. "We always throw away old clothes. Ending is betterthan mending, ending is better than mending, ending isbetter …"

"Government's an affair of sitting, not hitting. You rulewith the brains and the buttocks, never with the fists. Forexample, there was the conscription of consumption."

"There, I'm ready," said Lenina, but Fanny remainedspeechless and averted. "Let's make peace, Fanny darling."

"Every man, woman and child compelled to consume so much ayear. In the interests of industry. The sole result …"

"Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the lessriches; the more stitches …"

"One of these days," said Fanny, with dismal emphasis,"you'll get into trouble."

"Conscientious objection on an enormous scale. Anything notto consume. Back to nature."

"I do love flying. I do love flying."

"Back to culture. Yes, actually to culture. You can'tconsume much if you sit still and read books."

"Do I look all right?" Lenina asked. Her jacket was made ofbottle green acetate cloth with green viscose fur; at thecuffs and collar.

"Eight hundred Simple Lifers were mowed down by machine gunsat Golders Green."

"Ending is better than mending, ending is better thanmending."

Green corduroy shorts and white viscose-woollen stockingsturned down below the knee.


"Then came the famous British Museum Massacre. Two thousandculture fans gassed with dichlorethyl sulphide."

A green-and-white jockey cap shaded Lenina's eyes; her shoeswere bright green and highly polished.

"In the end," said Mustapha Mond, "the Controllers realizedthat force was no good. The slower but infinitely surermethods of ectogenesis, neo-Pavlovian conditioning andhypnopædia …"

And round her waist she wore a silver-mounted greenmorocco-surrogate cartridge belt, bulging (for Lenina wasnot a freemartin) with the regulation supply ofcontraceptives.

"The discoveries of Pfitzner and Kawaguchi were at last madeuse of. An intensive propaganda against viviparousreproduction …"

"Perfect!" cried Fanny enthusiastically. She could neverresist Lenina's charm for long. "And what a perfectly sweetMalthusian belt!"

"Accompanied by a campaign against the Past; by the closingof museums, the blowing up of historical monuments (luckilymost of them had already been destroyed during the NineYears' War); by the suppression of all books publishedbefore A.F. 15O.''

"I simply must get one like it," said Fanny.

"There were some things called the pyramids, for example.

"My old black-patent bandolier …"

"And a man called Shakespeare. You've never heard of them ofcourse."

"It's an absolute disgrace–that bandolier of mine."

"Such are the advantages of a really scientific education."

"The more stitches the less riches; the more stitches theless …"


"The introduction of Our Ford's first T-Model …"

"I've had it nearly three months."

"Chosen as the opening date of the new era."

"Ending is better than mending; ending is better …"

"There was a thing, as I've said before, calledChristianity."

"Ending is better than mending."

"The ethics and philosophy of under-consumption …"

"I love new clothes, I love new clothes, I love …"

"So essential when there was under-production; but in an ageof machines and the fixation of nitrogen–positively a crimeagainst society."

"Henry Foster gave it me."

"All crosses had their tops cut and became T's. There wasalso a thing called God."

"It's real morocco-surrogate."

"We have the World State now. And Ford's Day celebrations,and Community Sings, and Solidarity Services."

"Ford, how I hate them!" Bernard Marx was thinking.

"There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they usedto drink enormous quantities of alcohol."

"Like meat, like so much meat."

"There was a thing called the soul and a thing calledimmortality."

"Do ask Henry where he got it."

"But they used to take morphia and cocaine."


"And what makes it worse, she thinks of herself as meat."

"Two thousand pharmacologists and bio-chemists weresubsidized in A.P. 178."

"He does look glum," said the Assistant Predestinator,pointing at Bernard Marx.

"Six years later it was being produced commercially. Theperfect drug."

"Let's bait him."

"Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant."

"Glum, Marx, glum." The clap on the shoulder made him start,look up. It was that brute Henry Foster. "What you need is agramme of soma."

"All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none oftheir defects."

"Ford, I should like to kill him!" But all he did was tosay, "No, thank you," and fend off the proffered tube oftablets.

"Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and comeback without so much as a headache or a mythology."

"Take it," insisted Henry Foster, "take it."

"Stability was practically assured."

"One cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments," said theAssistant Predestinator citing a piece of homely hypnopædicwisdom.

"It only remained to conquer old age."

"Damn you, damn you!" shouted Bernard Marx.

"Hoity-toity."

"Gonadal hormones, transfusion of young blood, magnesium


salts …"

"And do remember that a gramme is better than a damn." Theywent out, laughing.

"All the physiological stigmata of old age have beenabolished. And along with them, of course …"

"Don't forget to ask him about that Malthusian belt," saidFanny.

"Along with them all the old man's mental peculiarities.Characters remain constant throughout a whole lifetime."

"… two rounds of Obstacle Golf to get through before dark. Imust fly."

"Work, play–at sixty our powers and tastes are what theywere at seventeen. Old men in the bad old days used torenounce, retire, take to religion, spend their timereading, thinking–thinking!"

"Idiots, swine!" Bernard Marx was saying to himself, as hewalked down the corridor to the lift.

"Now–such is progress–the old men work, the old mencopulate, the old men have no time, no leisure frompleasure, not a moment to sit down and think–or if ever bysome unlucky chance such a crevice of time should yawn inthe solid substance of their distractions, there is alwayssoma, delicious soma, half a gramme for a half-holiday, agramme for a week-end, two grammes for a trip to thegorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon;returning whence they find themselves on the other side ofthe crevice, safe on the solid ground of daily labour anddistraction, scampering from feely to feely, from girl topneumatic girl, from Electromagnetic Golf course to …"

"Go away, little girl," shouted the D.H.C. angrily. "Goaway, little boy! Can't you see that his fordship's busy? Goand do your erotic play somewhere else."

"Suffer little children," said the Controller.

Slowly, majestically, with a faint humming of machinery, theConveyors moved forward, thirty-three centimters an hour. Inthe red darkness glinted innumerable rubies.

CHAPTER FOUR


THE LIFT was crowded with men from the Alpha Changing Rooms,and Lenina's entry wars greeted by many friendly nods andsmiles. She was a popular girl and, at one time or another,had spent a night with almost all of them.

They were dear boys, she thought, as she returned theirsalutations. Charming boys! Still, she did wish that GeorgeEdzel's ears weren't quite so big (perhaps he'd been givenjust a spot too much parathyroid at Metre 328?). And lookingat Benito Hoover, she couldn't help remembering that he wasreally too hairy when he took his clothes off.

Turning, with eyes a little saddened by the recollection, ofBenito's curly blackness, she saw in a corner the small thinbody, the melancholy face of Bernard Marx.

"Bernard!" she stepped up to him. "I was looking for you."Her voice rang clear above the hum of the mounting lift. Theothers looked round curiously. "I wanted to talk to youabout our New Mexico plan." Out of the tail of her eye shecould see Benito Hoover gaping with astonishment. The gapeannoyed her. "Surprised I shouldn't be begging to go withhim again!" she said to herself. Then aloud, and more warmlythan ever, "I'd simply love to come with you for a week inJuly," she went on. (Anyhow, she was publicly proving herunfaithfulness to Henry. Fanny ought to be pleased, eventhough it was Bernard.) "That is," Lenina gave him her mostdeliciously significant smile, "if you still want to haveme."

Bernard's pale face flushed. "What on earth for?" shewondered, astonished, but at the same time touched by thisstrange tribute to her power.

"Hadn't we better talk about it somewhere else?" hestammered, looking horribly uncomfortable.

"As though I'd been saying something shocking," thoughtLenina. "He couldn't look more upset if I'd made a dirtyjoke–asked him who his mother was, or something like that."

"I mean, with all these people about …" He was choked withconfusion.

Lenina's laugh was frank and wholly unmalicious. "How funnyyou are!" she said; and she quite genuinely did think himfunny. "You'll give me at least a week's warning, won'tyou," she went on in another tone. "I suppose we take theBlue Pacific Rocket? Does it start from the Charing-T Tower?Or is it from Hampstead?"

Before Bernard could answer, the lift came to a standstill.

"Roof!" called a creaking voice.

The liftman was a small simian creature, dressed in theblack tunic of an Epsilon-Minus Semi-Moron.


"Roof!"

He flung open the gates. The warm glory of afternoonsunlight made him start and blink his eyes. "Oh, roof!" herepeated in a voice of rapture. He was as though suddenlyand joyfully awakened from a dark annihilating stupor."Roof!"

He smiled up with a kind of doggily expectant adoration intothe faces of his passengers. Talking and laughing together,they stepped out into the light. The liftman looked afterthem.

"Roof?" he said once more, questioningly.

Then a bell rang, and from the ceiling of the lift a loudspeaker began, very softly and yet very imperiously, toissue its commands.

"Go down," it said, "go down. Floor Eighteen. Go down, godown. Floor Eighteen. Go down, go …"

The liftman slammed the gates, touched a button andinstantly dropped back into the droning twilight of thewell, the twilight of his own habitual stupor.

It was warm and bright on the roof. The summer afternoon wasdrowsy with the hum of passing helicopters; and the deeperdrone of the rocket-planes hastening, invisible, through thebright sky five or six miles overhead was like a caress onthe soft air. Bernard Marx drew a deep breath. He looked upinto the sky and round the blue horizon and finally downinto Lenina's face.

"Isn't it beautiful!" His voice trembled a little.

She smiled at him with an expression of the most sympatheticunderstanding. "Simply perfect for Obstacle Golf," sheanswered rapturously. "And now I must fly, Bernard. Henrygets cross if I keep him waiting. Let me know in good timeabout the date." And waving her hand she ran away across thewide flat roof towards the hangars. Bernard stood watchingthe retreating twinkle of the white stockings, the sunburntknees vivaciously bending and unbending again, again, andthe softer rolling of those well-fitted corduroy shortsbeneath the bottle green jacket. His face wore an expressionof pain.

"I should say she was pretty," said a loud and cheery voicejust behind him.

Bernard started and looked around. The chubby red face ofBenito Hoover was beaming down at him–beaming with manifestcordiality. Benito was notoriously good-natured. People saidof him that he could have got through life without evertouching soma. The malice and bad tempers from which otherpeople had to take holidays never afflicted him. Reality forBenito was always sunny.

"Pneumatic too. And how!" Then, in another tone: "But, Isay," he went on, "you do look glum! What you need is a


gramme of soma." Diving into his right-hand trouser-pocket,Benito produced a phial. "One cubic centimetre cures tengloomy … But, I say!"

Bernard had suddenly turned and rushed away.

Benito stared after him. "What can be the matter with thefellow?" he wondered, and, shaking his head, decided thatthe story about the alcohol having been put into the poorchap's blood-surrogate must be true. "Touched his brain, Isuppose."

He put away the soma bottle, and taking out a packet ofsex-hormone chewing-gum, stuffed a plug into his cheek andwalked slowly away towards the hangars, ruminating.

Henry Foster had had his machine wheeled out of its lock-upand, when Lenina arrived, was already seated in the cockpit,waiting.

"Four minutes late," was all his comment, as she climbed inbeside him. He started the engines and threw the helicopterscrews into gear. The machine shot vertically into the air.Henry accelerated; the humming of the propeller shrilledfrom hornet to wasp, from wasp to mosquito; the speedometershowed that they were rising at the best part of twokilometres a minute. London diminished beneath them. Thehuge table-topped buildings were no more, in a few seconds,than a bed of geometrical mushrooms sprouting from the greenof park and garden. In the midst of them, thin-stalked, ataller, slenderer fungus, the Charing-T Tower lifted towardsthe sky a disk of shining concrete.

Like the vague torsos of fabulous athletes, huge fleshyclouds lolled on the blue air above their heads. Out of oneof them suddenly dropped a small scarlet insect, buzzing asit fell.

"There's the Red Rocket," said Henry, "just come in from NewYork." Looking at his watch. "Seven minutes behind time," headded, and shook his head. "These Atlantic services–they'rereally scandalously unpunctual."

He took his foot off the accelerator. The humming of thescrews overhead dropped an octave and a half, back throughwasp and hornet to bumble bee, to cockchafer, tostag-beetle. The upward rush of the machine slackened off; amoment later they were hanging motionless in the air. Henrypushed at a lever; there was a click. Slowly at first, thenfaster and faster, till it was a circular mist before theireyes, the propeller in front of them began to revolve. Thewind of a horizontal speed whistled ever more shrilly in thestays. Henry kept his eye on the revolution-counter; whenthe needle touched the twelve hundred mark, he threw thehelicopter screws out of gear. The machine had enoughforward momentum to be able to fly on its planes.

Lenina looked down through the window in the floor betweenher feet. They were flying over the six kilometre zone ofpark-land that separated Central London from its first ring


of satellite suburbs. The green was maggoty withfore-shortened life. Forests of Centrifugal Bumble-puppytowers gleamed between the trees. Near Shepherd's Bush twothousand Beta-Minus mixed doubles were playingRiemann-surface tennis. A double row of Escalator FivesCourts lined the main road from Notting Hill to Willesden.In the Ealing stadium a Delta gymnastic display andcommunity sing was in progress.

"What a hideous colour khaki is," remarked Lenina, voicingthe hypnopædic prejudices of her caste.

The buildings of the Hounslow Feely Studio covered seven anda half hectares. Near them a black and khaki army oflabourers was busy revitrifying the surface of the GreatWest Road. One of the huge travelling crucibles was beingtapped as they flew over. The molten stone poured out in astream of dazzling incandescence across the road, theasbestos rollers came and went; at the tail of an insulatedwatering cart the steam rose in white clouds.

At Brentford the Television Corporation's factory was like asmall town.

"They must be changing the shift," said Lenina.

Like aphides and ants, the leaf-green Gamma girls, the blackSemi-Morons swarmed round the entrances, or stood in queuesto take their places in the monorail tram-cars.Mulberry-coloured Beta-Minuses came and went among thecrowd. The roof of the main building was alive with thealighting and departure of helicopters.

"My word," said Lenina, "I'm glad I'm not a Gamma."

Ten minutes later they were at Stoke Poges and had startedtheir first round of Obstacle Golf.

§ 2

WITH eyes for the most part downcast and, if ever theylighted on a fellow creature, at once and furtively averted,Bernard hastened across the roof. He was like a man pursued,but pursued by enemies he does not wish to see, lest theyshould seem more hostile even than he had supposed, and hehimself be made to feel guiltier and even more helplesslyalone.

"That horrible Benito Hoover!" And yet the man had meantwell enough. Which only made it, in a way, much worse. Thosewho meant well behaved in the same way as those who meantbadly. Even Lenina was making him suffer. He rememberedthose weeks of timid indecision, during which he had lookedand longed and despaired of ever having the courage to askher. Dared he face the risk of being humiliated by acontemptuous refusal? But if she were to say yes, whatrapture! Well, now she had said it and he was stillwretched–wretched that she should have thought it such aperfect afternoon for Obstacle Golf, that she should havetrotted away to join Henry Foster, that she should havefound him funny for not wanting to talk of their mostprivate affairs in public. Wretched, in a word, because she


had behaved as any healthy and virtuous English girl oughtto behave and not in some other, abnormal, extraordinaryway.

He opened the door of his lock-up and called to a loungingcouple of Delta-Minus attendants to come and push hismachine out on to the roof. The hangars were staffed by asingle Bokanovsky Group, and the men were twins, identicallysmall, black and hideous. Bernard gave his orders in thesharp, rather arrogant and even offensive tone of one whodoes not feel himself too secure in his superiority. To havedealings with members of the lower castes was always, forBernard, a most distressing experience. For whatever thecause (and the current gossip about the alcohol in hisblood-surrogate may very likely–for accidents willhappen–have been true) Bernard's physique as hardly betterthan that of the average Gamma. He stood eight centimetresshort of the standard Alpha height and was slender inproportion. Contact with members of he lower castes alwaysreminded him painfully of this physical inadequacy. "I am I,and wish I wasn't"; his self-consciousness was acute andstressing. Each time he found himself looking on the level,instead of downward, into a Delta's face, he felthumiliated. Would the creature treat him with the respectdue to his caste? The question haunted him. Not withoutreason. For Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons had been to someextent conditioned to associate corporeal mass with socialsuperiority. Indeed, a faint hypnopædic prejudice in favourof size was universal. Hence the laughter of the women towhom he made proposals, the practical joking of his equalsamong the men. The mockery made him feel an outsider; andfeeling an outsider he behaved like one, which increased theprejudice against him and intensified the contempt andhostility aroused by his physical defects. Which in turnincreased his sense of being alien and alone. A chronic fearof being slighted made him avoid his equals, made him stand,where his inferiors were concerned, self-consciously on hisdignity. How bitterly he envied men like Henry Foster andBenito Hoover! Men who never had to shout at an Epsilon toget an order obeyed; men who took their position forgranted; men who moved through the caste system as a fishthrough water–so utterly at home as to be unaware either ofthemselves or of the beneficent and comfortable element inwhich they had their being.

Slackly, it seemed to him, and with reluctance, the twinattendants wheeled his plane out on the roof.

"Hurry up!" said Bernard irritably. One of them glanced athim. Was that a kind of bestial derision that he detected inthose blank grey eyes? "Hurry up!" he shouted more loudly,and there was an ugly rasp in his voice.

He climbed into the plane and, a minute later, was flyingsouthwards, towards the river.

The various Bureaux of Propaganda and the College ofEmotional Engineering were housed in a single sixty-storybuilding in Fleet Street. In the basement and on the lowfloors were the presses and offices of the three greatLondon newspapers–The Hourly Radio, an upper-caste sheet,the pale green Gamma Gazette, and, on khaki paper and in


words exclusively of one syllable, The Delta Mirror. Thencame the Bureaux of Propaganda by Television, by FeelingPicture, and by Synthetic Voice and Musicrespectively–twenty-two floors of them. Above were thesearch laboratories and the padded rooms in whichSound-Track Writers and Synthetic Composers did the delicatework. The top eighteen floors were occupied the College ofEmotional Engineering.

Bernard landed on the roof of Propaganda House and steppedout.

"Ring down to Mr. Helmholtz Watson," he ordered theGamma-Plus porter, "and tell him that Mr. Bernard Marx iswaiting for him on the roof."

He sat down and lit a cigarette.

Helmholtz Watson was writing when the message came down.

"Tell him I'm coming at once," he said and hung up thereceiver. Then, turning to his secretary, "I'll leave you toput my things away," he went on in the same official andimpersonal tone; and, ignoring her lustrous smile, got upand walked briskly to the door.

He was a powerfully built man, deep-chested,broad-shouldered, massive, and yet quick in his movements,springy and agile. The round strong pillar of his necksupported a beautifully shaped head. His hair was dark andcurly, his features strongly marked. In a forcible emphaticway, he was handsome and looked, as his secretary was nevertired of repeating, every centimetre an Alpha Plus. Byprofession he was a lecturer at the College of EmotionalEngineering (Department of Writing) and the intervals of hiseducational activities, a working Emotional Engineer. Hewrote regularly for The Hourly Radio, composed feelyscenarios, and had the happiest knack for slogans andhypnopædic rhymes.

"Able," was the verdict of his superiors. "Perhaps, (andthey would shake their heads, would significantly lowertheir voices) "a little too able."

Yes, a little too able; they were right. A mental excess hadproduced in Helmholtz Watson effects very similar to thosewhich, in Bernard Marx, were the result of a physicaldefect. Too little bone and brawn had isolated Bernard fromhis fellow men, and the sense of this apartness, being, byall the current standards, a mental excess, became in itsturn a cause of wider separation. That which had madeHelmholtz so uncomfortably aware of being himself and allalone was too much ability. What the two men shared was theknowledge that they were individuals. But whereas thephysically defective Bernard had suffered all his life fromthe consciousness of being separate, it was only quiterecently that, grown aware of his mental excess, HelmholtzWatson had also become aware of his difference from thepeople who surrounded him. This Escalator-Squash champion,


this indefatigable lover (it was said that he had had sixhundred and forty different girls in under four years), thisadmirable committee man and best mixer had realized quitesuddenly that sport, women, communal activities were only,so far as he was concerned, second bests. Really, and at thebottom, he was interested in something else. But in what? Inwhat? That was the problem which Bernard had come to discusswith him–or rather, since it was always Helmholtz who didall the talking, to listen to his friend discussing, yetonce more.

Three charming girls from the Bureau of Propaganda bySynthetic Voice waylaid him as he stepped out of the lift.

"Oh, Helmholtz, darling, do come and have a picnic supperwith us on Exmoor." They clung round him imploringly.

He shook his head, he pushed his way through them. "No, no."

"We're not inviting any other man."

But Helmholtz remained unshaken even by this delightfulpromise. "No," he repeated, "I'm busy." And he heldresolutely on his course. The girls trailed after him. Itwas not till he had actually climbed into Bernard's planeand slammed the door that they gave up pursuit. Not withoutreproaches.

"These women!" he said, as the machine rose into the air."These women!" And he shook his head, he frowned. "Tooawful," Bernard hypocritically agreed, wishing, as he spokethe words, that he could have as many girls as Helmholtzdid, and with as little trouble. He was seized with a suddenurgent need to boast. "I'm taking Lenina Crowne to NewMexico with me," he said in a tone as casual as he couldmake it.

"Are you?" said Helmholtz, with a total absence of interest.Then after a little pause, "This last week or two," he wenton, "I've been cutting all my committees and all my girls.You can't imagine what a hullabaloo they've been makingabout it at the College. Still, it's been worth it, I think.The effects …" He hesitated. "Well, they're odd, they'revery odd."

A physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mentalexcess. The process, it seemed, was reversible. Mentalexcess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntaryblindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, theartificial impotence of asceticism.

The rest of the short flight was accomplished in silence.When they had arrived and were comfortably stretched out onthe pneumatic sofas in Bernard's room, Helmholtz beganagain.

Speaking very slowly, "Did you ever feel," he asked, "asthough you had something inside you that was only waitingfor you to give it a chance to come out? Some sort of extrapower that you aren't using–you know, like all the waterthat goes down the falls instead of through the turbines?"


He looked at Bernard questioningly.

"You mean all the emotions one might be feeling if thingswere different?"

Helmholtz shook his head. "Not quite. I'm thinking of aqueer feeling I sometimes get, a feeling that I've gotsomething important to say and the power to say it–only Idon't know what it is, and I can't make any use of thepower. If there was some different way of writing … Or elsesomething else to write about …" He was silent; then, "Yousee," he went on at last, "I'm pretty good at inventingphrases–you know, the sort of words that suddenly make youjump, almost as though you'd sat on a pin, they seem so newand exciting even though they're about somethinghypnopædically obvious. But that doesn't seem enough. It'snot enough for the phrases to be good; what you make withthem ought to be good too."

"But your things are good, Helmholtz."

"Oh, as far as they go." Helmholtz shrugged his shoulders."But they go such a little way. They aren't importantenough, somehow. I feel I could do something much moreimportant. Yes, and more intense, more violent. But what?What is there more important to say? And how can one beviolent about the sort of things one's expected to writeabout? Words can be like X-rays, if you use themproperly–they'll go through anything. You read and you'repierced. That's one of the things I try to teach mystudents–how to write piercingly. But what on earth's thegood of being pierced by an article about a Community Sing,or the latest improvement in scent organs? Besides, can youmake words really piercing–you know, like the very hardestX-rays–when you're writing about that sort of thing? Can yousay something about nothing? That's what it finally boilsdown to. I try and I try …"

"Hush!" said Bernard suddenly, and lifted a warning finger;they listened. "I believe there's somebody at the door," hewhispered.

Helmholtz got up, tiptoed across the room, and with a sharpquick movement flung the door wide open. There was, ofcourse, nobody there.

"I'm sorry," said Bernard, feeling and looking uncomfortablyfoolish. "I suppose I've got things on my nerves a bit. Whenpeople are suspicious with you, you start being suspiciouswith them."

He passed his hand across his eyes, he sighed, his voicebecame plaintive. He was justifying himself. "If you knewwhat I'd had to put up with recently," he said almosttearfully–and the uprush of his self-pity was like afountain suddenly released. "If you only knew!"

Helmholtz Watson listened with a certain sense ofdiscomfort. "Poor little Bernard!" he said to himself. Butat the same time he felt rather ashamed for his friend. Hewished Bernard would show a little more pride.


CHAPTER FIVE

BY EIGHT O'CLOCK the light was failing. The loud speaker inthe tower of the Stoke Poges Club House began, in a morethan human tenor, to announce the closing of the courses.Lenina and Henry abandoned their game and walked backtowards the Club. From the grounds of the Internal andExternal Secretion Trust came the lowing of those thousandsof cattle which provided, with their hormones and theirmilk, the raw materials for the great factory at FarnhamRoyal.

An incessant buzzing of helicopters filled the twilight.Every two and a half minutes a bell and the screech ofwhistles announced the departure of one of the lightmonorail trains which carried the lower caste golfers backfrom their separate course to the metropolis.

Lenina and Henry climbed into their machine and started off.At eight hundred feet Henry slowed down the helicopterscrews, and they hung for a minute or two poised above thefading landscape. The forest of Burnham Beeches stretchedlike a great pool of darkness towards the bright shore ofthe western sky. Crimson at the horizon, the last of thesunset faded, through orange, upwards into yellow and a palewatery green. Northwards, beyond and above the trees, theInternal and External Secretions factory glared with afierce electric brilliance from every window of its twentystories. Beneath them lay the buildings of the Golf Club–thehuge Lower Caste barracks and, on the other side of adividing wall, the smaller houses reserved for Alpha andBeta members. The approaches to the monorail station wereblack with the ant-like pullulation of lower-caste activity.From under the glass vault a lighted train shot out into theopen. Following its southeasterly course across the darkplain their eyes were drawn to the majestic buildings of theSlough Crematorium. For the safety of night-flying planes,its four tall chimneys were flood-lighted and tipped withcrimson danger signals. It was a landmark.

"Why do the smoke-stacks have those things like balconiesaround them?" enquired Lenina.

"Phosphorus recovery," explained Henry telegraphically. "Ontheir way up the chimney the gases go through four separatetreatments. P2O5 used to go right out of circulation everytime they cremated some one. Now they recover overninety-eight per cent of it. More than a kilo and a half peradult corpse. Which makes the best part of four hundred tonsof phosphorus every year from England alone." Henry spokewith a happy pride, rejoicing whole-heartedly in theachievement, as though it had been his own. "Fine to thinkwe can go on being socially useful even after we're dead.Making plants grow."

Lenina, meanwhile, had turned her eyes away and was lookingperpendicularly downwards at the monorail station. "Fine,"she agreed. "But queer that Alphas and Betas won't make anymore plants grow than those nasty little Gammas and Deltas


and Epsilons down there."

"All men are physico-chemically equal," said Henrysententiously. "Besides, even Epsilons perform indispensableservices."

"Even an Epsilon …" Lenina suddenly remembered an occasionwhen, as a little girl at school, she had woken up in themiddle of the night and become aware, for the first time, ofthe whispering that had haunted all her sleeps. She sawagain the beam of moonlight, the row of small white beds;heard once more the soft, soft voice that said (the wordswere there, unforgotten, unforgettable after so manynight-long repetitions): "Every one works for every oneelse. We can't do without any one. Even Epsilons are useful.We couldn't do without Epsilons. Every one works for everyone else. We can't do without any one …" Lenina rememberedher first shock of fear and surprise; her speculationsthrough half a wakeful hour; and then, under the influenceof those endless repetitions, the gradual soothing of hermind, the soothing, the smoothing, the stealthy creeping ofsleep. …

"I suppose Epsilons don't really mind being Epsilons," shesaid aloud.

"Of course they don't. How can they? They don't know whatit's like being anything else. We'd mind, of course. Butthen we've been differently conditioned. Besides, we startwith a different heredity."

"I'm glad I'm not an Epsilon," said Lenina, with conviction.

"And if you were an Epsilon," said Henry, "your conditioningwould have made you no less thankful that you weren't a Betaor an Alpha." He put his forward propeller into gear andheaded the machine towards London. Behind them, in the west,the crimson and orange were almost faded; a dark bank ofcloud had crept into the zenith. As they flew over thecrematorium, the plane shot upwards on the column of hot airrising from the chimneys, only to fall as suddenly when itpassed into the descending chill beyond.

"What a marvellous switchback!" Lenina laughed delightedly.

But Henry's tone was almost, for a moment, melancholy. "Doyou know what that switchback was?" he said. "It was somehuman being finally and definitely disappearing. Going up ina squirt of hot gas. It would be curious to know who itwas–a man or a woman, an Alpha or an Epsilon. …" He sighed.Then, in a resolutely cheerful voice, "Anyhow," heconcluded, "there's one thing we can be certain of; whoeverhe may have been, he was happy when he was alive.Everybody's happy now."

"Yes, everybody's happy now," echoed Lenina. They had heardthe words repeated a hundred and fifty times every night fortwelve years.

Landing on the roof of Henry's forty-story apartment housein Westminster, they went straight down to the dining-hall.There, in a loud and cheerful company, they ate an excellent


meal. Soma was served with the coffee. Lenina took twohalf-gramme tablets and Henry three. At twenty past ninethey walked across the street to the newly openedWestminster Abbey Cabaret. It was a night almost withoutclouds, moonless and starry; but of this on the wholedepressing fact Lenina and Henry were fortunately unaware.The electric sky-signs effectively shut off the outerdarkness. "CALVIN STOPES AND HIS SIXTEEN SEXOPHONISTS." Fromthe façade of the new Abbey the giant letters invitinglyglared. "LONDON'S FINEST SCENT AND COLOUR ORGAN. ALL THELATEST SYNTHETIC MUSIC."

They entered. The air seemed hot and somehow breathless withthe scent of ambergris and sandalwood. On the domed ceilingof the hall, the colour organ had momentarily painted atropical sunset. The Sixteen Sexophonists were playing anold favourite: "There ain't no Bottle in all the world likethat dear little Bottle of mine." Four hundred couples werefive-stepping round the polished floor. Lenina and Henrywere soon the four hundred and first. The saxophones wailedlike melodious cats under the moon, moaned in the alto andtenor registers as though the little death were upon them.Rich with a wealth of harmonics, their tremulous chorusmounted towards a climax, louder and ever louder–until atlast, with a wave of his hand, the conductor let loose thefinal shattering note of ether-music and blew the sixteenmerely human blowers clean out of existence. Thunder in Aflat major. And then, in all but silence, in all butdarkness, there followed a gradual deturgescence, adiminuendo sliding gradually, through quarter tones, down,down to a faintly whispered dominant chord that lingered on(while the five-four rhythms still pulsed below) chargingthe darkened seconds with an intense expectancy. And at lastexpectancy was fulfilled. There was a sudden explosivesunrise, and simultaneously, the Sixteen burst into song:

"Bottle of mine, it's you I've always wanted! Bottle ofmine, why was I ever decanted? Skies are blue inside ofyou, The weather's always fine; For There ain't no Bottlein all the world Like that dear little Bottle of mine."

Five-stepping with the other four hundred round and roundWestminster Abbey, Lenina and Henry were yet dancing inanother world–the warm, the richly coloured, the infinitelyfriendly world of soma-holiday. How kind, how good-looking,how delightfully amusing every one was! "Bottle of mine,it's you I've always wanted …" But Lenina and Henry had whatthey wanted … They were inside, here and now-safely insidewith the fine weather, the perennially blue sky. And when,exhausted, the Sixteen had laid by their saxophones and theSynthetic Music apparatus was producing the very latest inslow Malthusian Blues, they might have been twin embryosgently rocking together on the waves of a bottled ocean ofblood-surrogate.

"Good-night, dear friends. Good-night, dear friends." Theloud speakers veiled their commands in a genial and musicalpoliteness. "Good-night, dear friends …"


Obediently, with all the others, Lenina and Henry left thebuilding. The depressing stars had travelled quite some wayacross the heavens. But though the separating screen of thesky-signs had now to a great extent dissolved, the two youngpeople still retained their happy ignorance of the night.

Swallowing half an hour before closing time, that seconddose of soma had raised a quite impenetrable wall betweenthe actual universe and their minds. Bottled, they crossedthe street; bottled, they took the lift up to Henry's roomon the twenty-eighth floor. And yet, bottled as she was, andin spite of that second gramme of soma, Lenina did notforget to take all the contraceptive precautions prescribedby the regulations. Years of intensive hypnopædia and, fromtwelve to seventeen, Malthusian drill three times a week hadmade the taking of these precautions almost as automatic andinevitable as blinking.

"Oh, and that reminds me," she said, as she came back fromthe bathroom, "Fanny Crowne wants to know where you foundthat lovely green morocco-surrogate cartridge belt you gaveme."

§ 2

ALTERNATE Thursdays were Bernard's Solidarity Service days.After an early dinner at the Aphroditzeum (to whichHelrnholtz had recently been elected under Rule Two) he tookleave of his friend and, hailing a taxi on the roof told theman to fly to the Fordson Community Singery. The machinerose a couple of hundred metres, then headed eastwards, andas it turned, there before Bernard's eyes, giganticallybeautiful, was the Singery. Flood-lighted, its three hundredand twenty metres of white Carrara-surrogate gleamed with asnowy incandescence over Ludgate Hill; at each of the fourcorners of its helicopter platform an immense T shonecrimson against the night, and from the mouths oftwenty-four vast golden trumpets rumbled a solemn syntheticmusic.

"Damn, I'm late," Bernard said to himself as he first caughtsight of Big Henry, the Singery clock. And sure enough, ashe was paying off his cab, Big Henry sounded the hour."Ford," sang out an immense bass voice from all the goldentrumpets. "Ford, Ford, Ford …" Nine times. Bernard ran forthe lift.

The great auditorium for Ford's Day celebrations and othermassed Community Sings was at the bottom of the building.Above it, a hundred to each floor, were the seven thousandrooms used by Solidarity Groups for their fortnightservices. Bernard dropped down to floor thirty-three,hurried along the corridor, stood hesitating for a momentoutside Room 3210, then, having wound himself up, opened thedoor and walked in.

Thank Ford! he was not the last. Three chairs of the twelvearranged round the circular table were still unoccupied. Heslipped into the nearest of them as inconspicuously as hecould and prepared to frown at the yet later comers whenever


they should arrive.

Turning towards him, "What were you playing this afternoon?"the girl on his left enquired. "Obstacle, orElectro-magnetic?"

Bernard looked at her (Ford! it was Morgana Rothschild) andblushingly had to admit that he had been playing neither.Morgana stared at him with astonishment. There was anawkward silence.

Then pointedly she turned away and addressed herself to themore sporting man on her left.

"A good beginning for a Solidarity Service," thought Bernardmiserably, and foresaw for himself yet another failure toachieve atonement. If only he had given himself time to lookaround instead of scuttling for the nearest chair! He couldhave sat between Fifi Bradlaugh and Joanna Diesel. Insteadof which he had gone and blindly planted himself next toMorgana. Morgana! Ford! Those black eyebrows of hers–thateyebrow, rather–for they met above the nose. Ford! And onhis right was Clara Deterding. True, Clara's eyebrows didn'tmeet. But she was really too pneumatic. Whereas Fifi andJoanna were absolutely right. Plump, blonde, not too large …And it was that great lout, Tom Kawaguchi, who now took theseat between them.

The last arrival was Sarojini Engels.

"You're late," said the President of the Group severely."Don't let it happen again."

Sarojini apologized and slid into her place between JimBokanovsky and Herbert Bakunin. The group was now complete,the solidarity circle perfect and without flaw. Man, woman,man, in a ring of endless alternation round the table.Twelve of them ready to be made one, waiting to cometogether, to be fused, to lose their twelve separateidentities in a larger being.

The President stood up, made the sign of the T and,switching on the synthetic music, let loose the softindefatigable beating of drums and a choir ofinstruments–near-wind and super-string–that plangentlyrepeated and repeated the brief and unescapably hauntingmelody of the first Solidarity Hymn. Again, again–and it wasnot the ear that heard the pulsing rhythm, it was themidriff; the wail and clang of those recurring harmonieshaunted, not the mind, but the yearning bowels ofcompassion.

The President made another sign of the T and sat down. Theservice had begun. The dedicated soma tablets were placed inthe centre of the table. The loving cup of strawberryice-cream soma was passed from hand to hand and, with theformula, "I drink to my annihilation," twelve times quaffed.Then to the accompaniment of the synthetic orchestra theFirst Solidarity Hymn was sung.


"Ford, we are twelve; oh, make us one, Like drops withinthe Social River, Oh, make us now together run As swiftlyas thy shining Flivver."

Twelve yearning stanzas. And then the loving cup was passeda second time. "I drink to the Greater Being" was now theformula. All drank. Tirelessly the music played. The drumsbeat. The crying and clashing of the harmonies were anobsession in the melted bowels. The Second Solidarity Hymnwas sung.

"Come, Greater Being, Social Friend, AnnihilatingTwelve-in-One! We long to die, for when we end, Our largerlife has but begun."

Again twelve stanzas. By this time the soma had begun towork. Eyes shone, cheeks were flushed, the inner light ofuniversal benevolence broke out on every face in happy,friendly smiles. Even Bernard felt himself a little melted.When Morgana Rothschild turned and beamed at him, he did hisbest to beam back. But the eyebrow, that blacktwo-in-one–alas, it was still there; he couldn't ignore it,couldn't, however hard he tried. The melting hadn't gone farenough. Perhaps if he had been sitting between Fifi andJoanna … For the third time the loving cup went round; "Idrink to the imminence of His Coming," said MorganaRothschild, whose turn it happened to be to initiate thecircular rite. Her tone was loud, exultant. She drank andpassed the cup to Bernard. "I drink to the imminence of HisComing," he repeated, with a sincere attempt to feel thatthe coming was imminent; but the eyebrow continued to haunthim, and the Coming, so far as he was concerned, washorribly remote. He drank and handed the cup to ClaraDeterding. "It'll be a failure again," he said to himself."I know it will." But he went on doing his best to beam.

The loving cup had made its circuit. Lifting his hand, thePresident gave a signal; the chorus broke out into the thirdSolidarity Hymn.

"Feel how the Greater Being comes! Rejoice and, inrejoicings, die! Melt in the music of the drums! For I amyou and you are I."

As verse succeeded verse the voices thrilled with an everintenser excitement. The sense of the Coming's imminence waslike an electric tension in the air. The President switchedoff the music and, with the final note of the final stanza,there was absolute silence–the silence of stretchedexpectancy, quivering and creeping with a galvanic life. ThePresident reached out his hand; and suddenly a Voice, a deepstrong Voice, more musical than any merely human voice,richer, warmer, more vibrant with love and yearning andcompassion, a wonderful, mysterious, supernatural Voicespoke from above their heads. Very slowly, "Oh, Ford, Ford,Ford," it said diminishingly and on a descending scale. Asensation of warmth radiated thrillingly out from the solarplexus to every extremity of the bodies of those who


listened; tears came into their eyes; their hearts, theirbowels seemed to move within them, as though with anindependent life. "Ford!" they were melting, "Ford!"dissolved, dissolved. Then, in another tone, suddenly,startlingly. "Listen!" trumpeted the voice. "Listen!" Theylistened. After a pause, sunk to a whisper, but a whisper,somehow, more penetrating than the loudest cry. "The feet ofthe Greater Being," it went on, and repeated the words: "Thefeet of the Greater Being." The whisper almost expired. "Thefeet of the Greater Being are on the stairs." And once morethere was silence; and the expectancy, momentarily relaxed,was stretched again, tauter, tauter, almost to the tearingpoint. The feet of the Greater Being–oh, they heard them,they heard them, coming softly down the stairs, comingnearer and nearer down the invisible stairs. The feet of theGreater Being. And suddenly the tearing point was reached.Her eyes staring, her lips parted. Morgana Rothschild sprangto her feet.

"I hear him," she cried. "I hear him."

"He's coming," shouted Sarojini Engels.

"Yes, he's coming, I hear him." Fifi Bradlaugh and TomKawaguchi rose simultaneously to their feet.

"Oh, oh, oh!" Joanna inarticulately testified.

"He's coming!" yelled Jim Bokanovsky.

The President leaned forward and, with a touch, released adelirium of cymbals and blown brass, a fever of tom-tomming.

"Oh, he's coming!" screamed Clara Deterding. "Aie!" and itwas as though she were having her throat cut.

Feeling that it was time for him to do something, Bernardalso jumped up and shouted: "I hear him; He's coming." Butit wasn't true. He heard nothing and, for him, nobody wascoming. Nobody–in spite of the music, in spite of themounting excitement. But he waved his arms, he shouted withthe best of them; and when the others began to jig and stampand shuffle, he also jigged and shuffled.

Round they went, a circular procession of dancers, each withhands on the hips of the dancer preceding, round and round,shouting in unison, stamping to the rhythm of the music withtheir feet, beating it, beating it out with hands on thebuttocks in front; twelve pairs of hands beating as one; asone, twelve buttocks slabbily resounding. Twelve as one,twelve as one. "I hear Him, I hear Him coming." The musicquickened; faster beat the feet, faster, faster fell therhythmic hands. And all at once a great synthetic bassboomed out the words which announced the approachingatonement and final consummation of solidarity, the comingof the Twelve-in-One, the incarnation of the Greater Being."Orgy-porgy," it sang, while the tom-toms continued to beattheir feverish tattoo:

"Orgy-porgy, Ford and fun, Kiss the girls and make them One.Boys at 0ne with girls at peace; Orgy-porgy gives release."


"Orgy-porgy," the dancers caught up the liturgical refrain,"Orgy-porgy, Ford and fun, kiss the girls …" And as theysang, the lights began slowly to fade–to fade and at thesame time to grow warmer, richer, redder, until at last theywere dancing in the crimson twilight of an Embryo Store."Orgy-porgy …" In their blood-coloured and foetal darknessthe dancers continued for a while to circulate, to beat andbeat out the indefatigable rhythm. "Orgy-porgy …" Then thecircle wavered, broke, fell in partial disintegration on thering of couches which surrounded–circle enclosing circle–thetable and its planetary chairs. "Orgy-porgy …" Tenderly thedeep Voice crooned and cooed; in the red twilight it was asthough some enormous negro dove were hovering benevolentlyover the now prone or supine dancers.

They were standing on the roof; Big Henry had just sungeleven. The night was calm and warm.

"Wasn't it wonderful?" said Fifi Bradlaugh. "Wasn't itsimply wonderful?" She looked at Bernard with an expressionof rapture, but of rapture in which there was no trace ofagitation or excitement–for to be excited is still to beunsatisfied. Hers was the calm ecstasy of achievedconsummation, the peace, not of mere vacant satiety andnothingness, but of balanced life, of energies at rest andin equilibrium. A rich and living peace. For the SolidarityService had given as well as taken, drawn off only toreplenish. She was full, she was made perfect, she was stillmore than merely herself. "Didn't you think it waswonderful?" she insisted, looking into Bernard's face withthose supernaturally shining eyes.

"Yes, I thought it was wonderful," he lied and looked away;the sight of her transfigured face was at once an accusationand an ironical reminder of his own separateness. He was asmiserably isolated now as he had been when the servicebegan–more isolated by reason of his unreplenishedemptiness, his dead satiety. Separate and unatoned, whilethe others were being fused into the Greater Being; aloneeven in Morgana's embrace–much more alone, indeed, morehopelessly himself than he had ever been in his life before.He had emerged from that crimson twilight into the commonelectric glare with a self-consciousness intensified to thepitch of agony. He was utterly miserable, and perhaps (hershining eyes accused him), perhaps it was his own fault."Quite wonderful," he repeated; but the only thing he couldthink of was Morgana's eyebrow.

CHAPTER SIX

ODD, ODD, odd, was Lenina's verdict on Bernard Marx. So odd,indeed, that in the course of the succeeding weeks she hadwondered more than once whether she shouldn't change hermind about the New Mexico holiday, and go instead to theNorth Pole with Benito Hoover. The trouble was that she knewthe North Pole, had been there with George Edzel only lastsummer, and what was more, found it pretty grim. Nothing todo, and the hotel too hopelessly old-fashioned–no televisionlaid on in the bedrooms, no scent organ, only the most


putrid synthetic music, and not more than twenty-fiveEscalator-Squash Courts for over two hundred guests. No,decidedly she couldn't face the North Pole again. Added towhich, she had only been to America once before. And eventhen, how inadequately! A cheap week-end in New York–had itbeen with Jean-Jacques Habibullah or Bokanovsky Jones? Shecouldn't remember. Anyhow, it was of absolutely noimportance. The prospect of flying West again, and for awhole week, was very inviting. Moreover, for at least threedays of that week they would be in the Savage Reservation.Not more than half a dozen people in the whole Centre hadever been inside a Savage Reservation. As an Alpha-Pluspsychologist, Bernard was one of the few men she knewentitled to a permit. For Lenina, the opportunity wasunique. And yet, so unique also was Bernard's oddness thatshe had hesitated to take it, had actually thought ofrisking the Pole again with funny old Benito. At leastBenito was normal. Whereas Bernard …

"Alcohol in his blood-surrogate," was Fanny's explanation ofevery eccentricity. But Henry, with whom, one evening whenthey were in bed together, Lenina had rather anxiouslydiscussed her new lover, Henry had compared poor Bernard toa rhinoceros.

"You can't teach a rhinoceros tricks," he had explained inhis brief and vigorous style. "Some men are almostrhinoceroses; they don't respond properly to conditioning.Poor Devils! Bernard's one of them. Luckily for him, he'spretty good at his job. Otherwise the Director would neverhave kept him. However," he added consolingly, "I think he'spretty harmless."

Pretty harmless, perhaps; but also pretty disquieting. Thatmania, to start with, for doing things in private. Whichmeant, in practice, not doing anything at all. For what wasthere that one could do in private. (Apart, of course, fromgoing to bed: but one couldn't do that all the time.) Yes,what was there? Precious little. The first afternoon theywent out together was particularly fine. Lenina hadsuggested a swim at Toquay Country Club followed by dinnerat the Oxford Union. But Bernard thought there would be toomuch of a crowd. Then what about a round of Electro-magneticGolf at St. Andrew's? But again, no: Bernard considered thatElectro-magnetic Golf was a waste of time.

"Then what's time for?" asked Lenina in some astonishment.

Apparently, for going walks in the Lake District; for thatwas what he now proposed. Land on the top of Skiddaw andwalk for a couple of hours in the heather. "Alone with you,Lenina."

"But, Bernard, we shall be alone all night."

Bernard blushed and looked away. "I meant, alone fortalking," he mumbled.

"Talking? But what about?" Walking and talking–that seemed avery odd way of spending an afternoon.


In the end she persuaded him, much against his will, to flyover to Amsterdam to see the Semi-Demi-Finals of the Women'sHeavyweight Wrestling Championship.

"In a crowd," he grumbled. "As usual." He remainedobstinately gloomy the whole afternoon; wouldn't talk toLenina's friends (of whom they met dozens in the ice-creamsoma bar between the wrestling bouts); and in spite of hismisery absolutely refused to take the half-gramme raspberrysundae which she pressed upon him. "I'd rather be myself,"he said. "Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, howeverjolly."

"A gramme in time saves nine," said Lenina, producing abright treasure of sleep-taught wisdom. Bernard pushed awaythe proffered glass impatiently.

"Now don't lose your temper," she said. "Remember one cubiccentimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments."

"Oh, for Ford's sake, be quiet!" he shouted.

Lenina shrugged her shoulders. "A gramme is always betterthan a damn," she concluded with dignity, and drank thesundae herself.

On their way back across the Channel, Bernard insisted onstopping his propeller and hovering on his helicopter screwswithin a hundred feet of the waves. The weather had taken achange for the worse; a south-westerly wind had sprung up,the sky was cloudy.

"Look," he commanded.

"But it's horrible," said Lenina, shrinking back from thewindow. She was appalled by the rushing emptiness of thenight, by the black foam-flecked water heaving beneath them,by the pale face of the moon, so haggard and distractedamong the hastening clouds. "Let's turn on the radio.Quick!" She reached for the dialling knob on the dash-boardand turned it at random.

"… skies are blue inside of you," sang sixteen tremoloingfalsettos, "the weather's always …"

Then a hiccough and silence. Bernard had switched of thecurrent.

"I want to look at the sea in peace," he said. "One can'teven look with that beastly noise going on."

"But it's lovely. And I don't want to look."

"But I do," he insisted. "It makes me feel as though …" hehesitated, searching for words with which to expresshimself, "as though I were more me, if you see what I mean.More on my own, not so completely a part of something else.Not just a cell in the social body. Doesn't it make you feellike that, Lenina?"


But Lenina was crying. "It's horrible, it's horrible," shekept repeating. "And how can you talk like that about notwanting to be a part of the social body? After all, everyone works for every one else. We can't do without any one.Even Epsilons …"

"Yes, I know," said Bernard derisively. "'Even Epsilons areuseful'! So am I. And I damned well wish I weren't!"

Lenina was shocked by his blasphemy. "Bernard!" Sheprotested in a voice of amazed distress. "How can you?"

In a different key, "How can I?" he repeated meditatively."No, the real problem is: How is it that I can't, orrather–because, after all, I know quite well why Ican't–what would it be like if I could, if I were free–notenslaved by my conditioning."

"But, Bernard, you're saying the most awful things."

"Don't you wish you were free, Lenina?"

"I don't know what you mean. I am free. Free to have themost wonderful time. Everybody's happy nowadays."

He laughed, "Yes, 'Everybody's happy nowadays.' We begingiving the children that at five. But wouldn't you like tobe free to be happy in some other way, Lenina? In your ownway, for example; not in everybody else's way."

"I don't know what you mean," she repeated. Then, turning tohim, "Oh, do let's go back, Bernard," she besought; "I do sohate it here."

"Don't you like being with me?"

"But of course, Bernard. It's this horrible place."

"I thought we'd be more … more together here–with nothingbut the sea and moon. More together than in that crowd, oreven in my rooms. Don't you understand that?"

"I don't understand anything," she said with decision,determined to preserve her incomprehension intact. "Nothing.Least of all," she continued in another tone "why you don'ttake soma when you have these dreadful ideas of yours. You'dforget all about them. And instead of feeling miserable,you'd be jolly. So jolly," she repeated and smiled, for allthe puzzled anxiety in her eyes, with what was meant to bean inviting and voluptuous cajolery.

He looked at her in silence, his face unresponsive and verygrave–looked at her intently. After a few seconds Lenina'seyes flinched away; she uttered a nervous little laugh,tried to think of something to say and couldn't. The silenceprolonged itself.

When Bernard spoke at last, it was in a small tired voice."All right then," he said, "we'll go back." And steppinghard on the accelerator, he sent the machine rocketing up


into the sky. At four thousand he started his propeller.They flew in silence for a minute or two. Then, suddenly,Bernard began to laugh. Rather oddly, Lenina thought, butstill, it was laughter.

"Feeling better?" she ventured to ask.

For answer, he lifted one hand from the controls and,slipping his arm around her, began to fondle her breasts.

"Thank Ford," she said to herself, "he's all right again."

Half an hour later they were back in his rooms. Bernardswallowed four tablets of soma at a gulp, turned on theradio and television and began to undress.

"Well," Lenina enquired, with significant archness when theymet next afternoon on the roof, "did you think it was funyesterday?"

Bernard nodded. They climbed into the plane. A little jolt,and they were off.

"Every one says I'm awfully pneumatic," said Leninareflectively, patting her own legs.

"Awfully." But there was an expression of pain in Bernard'seyes. "Like meat," he was thinking.

She looked up with a certain anxiety. "But you don't thinkI'm too plump, do you?"

He shook his head. Like so much meat.

"You think I'm all right." Another nod. "In every way?"

"Perfect," he said aloud. And inwardly. "She thinks ofherself that way. She doesn't mind being meat."

Lenina smiled triumphantly. But her satisfaction waspremature.

"All the same," he went on, after a little pause, "I stillrather wish it had all ended differently."

"Differently?" Were there other endings?

"I didn't want it to end with our going to bed," hespecified.

Lenina was astonished.

"Not at once, not the first day."

"But then what …?"

He began to talk a lot of incomprehensible and dangerousnonsense. Lenina did her best to stop the ears of her mind;but every now and then a phrase would insist on becomingaudible. "… to try the effect of arresting my impulses," she


heard him say. The words seemed to touch a spring in hermind.

"Never put off till to-morrow the fun you can have to-day,"she said gravely.

"Two hundred repetitions, twice a week from fourteen tosixteen and a half," was all his comment. The mad bad talkrambled on. "I want to know what passion is," she heard himsaying. "I want to feel something strongly."

"When the individual feels, the community reels," Leninapronounced.

"Well, why shouldn't it reel a bit?"

"Bernard!"

But Bernard remained unabashed.

"Adults intellectually and during working hours," he wenton. "Infants where feeling and desire are concerned."

"Our Ford loved infants."

Ignoring the interruption. "It suddenly struck me the otherday," continued Bernard, "that it might be possible to be anadult all the time."

"I don't understand." Lenina's tone was firm.

"I know you don't. And that's why we went to bed togetheryesterday–like infants–instead of being adults and waiting."

"But it was fun," Lenina insisted. "Wasn't it?"

"Oh, the greatest fun," he answered, but in a voice somournful, with an expression so profoundly miserable, thatLenina felt all her triumph suddenly evaporate. Perhaps hehad found her too plump, after all.

"I told you so," was all that Fanny said, when Lenina cameand made her confidences. "It's the alcohol they put in hissurrogate."

"All the same," Lenina insisted. "I do like him. He has suchawfully nice hands. And the way he moves hisshoulders–that's very attractive." She sighed. "But I wishhe weren't so odd."

§ 2

HALTING for a moment outside the door of the Director'sroom, Bernard drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders,bracing himself to meet the dislike and disapproval which hewas certain of finding within. He knocked and entered.

"A permit for you to initial, Director," he said as airilyas possible, and laid the paper on the writing-table.

The Director glanced at him sourly. But the stamp of theWorld Controller's Office was at the head of the paper and


the signature of Mustapha Mond, bold and black, across thebottom. Everything was perfectly in order. The director hadno choice. He pencilled his initials–two small pale lettersabject at the feet of Mustapha Mond–and was about to returnthe paper without a word of comment or genial Ford-speed,when his eye was caught by something written in the body ofthe permit.

"For the New Mexican Reservation?" he said, and his tone,the face he lifted to Bernard, expressed a kind of agitatedastonishment.

Surprised by his surprise, Bernard nodded. There was asilence.

The Director leaned back in his chair, frowning. "How longago was it?" he said, speaking more to himself than toBernard. "Twenty years, I suppose. Nearer twenty-five. Imust have been your age …" He sighed and shook his head.

Bernard felt extremely uncomfortable. A man so conventional,so scrupulously correct as the Director–and to commit sogross a solecism! lt made him want to hide his face, to runout of the room. Not that he himself saw anythingintrinsically objectionable in people talking about theremote past; that was one of those hypnopædic prejudices hehad (so he imagined) completely got rid of. What made himfeel shy was the knowledge that the Directordisapproved–disapproved and yet had been betrayed into doingthe forbidden thing. Under what inward compulsion? Throughhis discomfort Bernard eagerly listened.

"I had the same idea as you," the Director was saying."Wanted to have a look at the savages. Got a permit for NewMexico and went there for my summer holiday. With the girl Iwas having at the moment. She was a Beta-Minus, and I think"(he shut his eyes), "I think she had yellow hair. Anyhow shewas pneumatic, particularly pneumatic; I remember that.Well, we went there, and we looked at the savages, and werode about on horses and all that. And then–it was almostthe last day of my leave–then … well, she got lost. We'dgone riding up one of those revolting mountains, and it washorribly hot and oppressive, and after lunch we went tosleep. Or at least I did. She must have gone for a walk,alone. At any rate, when I woke up, she wasn't there. Andthe most frightful thunderstorm I've ever seen was justbursting on us. And it poured and roared and flashed; andthe horses broke loose and ran away; and I fell down, tryingto catch them, and hurt my knee, so that I could hardlywalk. Still, I searched and I shouted and I searched. Butthere was no sign of her. Then I thought she must have goneback to the rest-house by herself. So I crawled down intothe valley by the way we had come. My knee was agonizinglypainful, and I'd lost my soma. It took me hours. I didn'tget back to the rest-house till after midnight. And shewasn't there; she wasn't there," the Director repeated.There was a silence. "Well," he resumed at last, "the nextday there was a search. But we couldn't find her. She musthave fallen into a gully somewhere; or been eaten by amountain lion. Ford knows. Anyhow it was horrible. It upsetme very much at the time. More than it ought to have done, Idare say. Because, after all, it's the sort of accident that


might have happened to any one; and, of course, the socialbody persists although the component cells may change." Butthis sleep-taught consolation did not seem to be veryeffective. Shaking his head, "I actually dream about itsometimes," the Director went on in a low voice. "Dream ofbeing woken up by that peal of thunder and finding her gone;dream of searching and searching for her under the trees."He lapsed into the silence of reminiscence.

"You must have had a terrible shock," said Bernard, almostenviously.

At the sound of his voice the Director started into a guiltyrealization of where he was; shot a glance at Bernard, andaverting his eyes, blushed darkly; looked at him again withsudden suspicion and, angrily on his dignity, "Don'timagine," he said, "that I'd had any indecorous relationwith the girl. Nothing emotional, nothing long-drawn. It wasall perfectly healthy and normal." He handed Bernard thepermit. "I really don't know why I bored you with thistrivial anecdote." Furious with himself for having givenaway a discreditable secret, he vented his rage on Bernard.The look in his eyes was now frankly malignant. "And Ishould like to take this opportunity, Mr. Marx," he went on,"of saying that I'm not at all pleased with the reports Ireceive of your behaviour outside working hours. You may saythat this is not my business. But it is. I have the goodname of the Centre to think of. My workers must be abovesuspicion, particularly those of the highest castes. Alphasare so conditioned that they do not have to be infantile intheir emotional behaviour. But that is all the more reasonfor their making a special effort to conform. lt is theirduty to be infantile, even against their inclination. Andso, Mr. Marx, I give you fair warning." The Director's voicevibrated with an indignation that had now become whollyrighteous and impersonal–was the expression of thedisapproval of Society itself. "If ever I hear again of anylapse from a proper standard of infantile decorum, I shallask for your transference to a Sub-Centre–preferably toIceland. Good morning." And swivelling round in his chair,he picked up his pen and began to write.

"That'll teach him," he said to himself. But he wasmistaken. For Bernard left the room with a swagger,exulting, as he banged the door behind him, in the thoughtthat he stood alone, embattled against the order of things;elated by the intoxicating consciousness of his individualsignificance and importance. Even the thought of persecutionleft him undismayed, was rather tonic than depressing. Hefelt strong enough to meet and overcome affliction, strongenough to face even Iceland. And this confidence was thegreater for his not for a moment really believing that hewould be called upon to face anything at all. People simplyweren't transferred for things like that. Iceland was just athreat. A most stimulating and life-giving threat. Walkingalong the corridor, he actually whistled.

Heroic was the account he gave that evening of his interviewwith the D.H.C. "Whereupon," it concluded, "I simply toldhim to go to the Bottomless Past and marched out of the


room. And that was that." He looked at Helmholtz Watsonexpectantly, awaiting his due reward of sympathy,encouragement, admiration. But no word came. Helmholtz satsilent, staring at the floor.

He liked Bernard; he was grateful to him for being the onlyman of his acquaintance with whom he could talk about thesubjects he felt to be important. Nevertheless, there werethings in Bernard which he hated. This boasting, forexample. And the outbursts of an abject self-pity with whichit alternated. And his deplorable habit of being bold afterthe event, and full, in absence, of the most extraordinarypresence of mind. He hated these things–just because heliked Bernard. The seconds passed. Helmholtz continued tostare at the floor. And suddenly Bernard blushed and turnedaway.

§ 3

THE journey was quite uneventful. The Blue Pacific Rocketwas two and a half minutes early at New Orleans, lost fourminutes in a tornado over Texas, but flew into a favourableair current at Longitude 95 West, and was able to land atSanta Fé less than forty seconds behind schedule time.

"Forty seconds on a six and a half hour flight. Not so bad,"Lenina conceded.

They slept that night at Santa Fé. The hotel wasexcellent–incomparably better, for example, than thathorrible Aurora Bora Palace in which Lenina had suffered somuch the previous summer. Liquid air, television,vibro-vacuum massage, radio, boiling caffeine solution, hotcontraceptives, and eight different kinds of scent were laidon in every bedroom. The synthetic music plant was workingas they entered the hall and left nothing to be desired. Anotice in the lift announced that there were sixtyEscalator-Squash-Racket Courts in the hotel, and thatObstacle and Electro-magnetic Golf could both be played inthe park.

"But it sounds simply too lovely," cried Lenina. "I almostwish we could stay here. Sixty Escalator-Squash Courts …"

"There won't be any in the Reservation," Bernard warned her."And no scent, no television, no hot water even. If you feelyou can't stand it, stay here till I come back."

Lenina was quite offended. "Of course I can stand it. I onlysaid it was lovely here because … well, because progress islovely, isn't it?"

"Five hundred repetitions once a week from thirteen toseventeen," said Bernard wearily, as though to himself.

"What did you say?"

"I said that progress was lovely. That's why you mustn'tcome to the Reservation unless you really want to."

"But I do want to."


"Very well, then," said Bernard; and it was almost a threat.

Their permit required the signature of the Warden of theReservation, at whose office next morning they dulypresented themselves. An Epsilon-Plus negro porter took inBernard's card, and they were admitted almost immnediately.

The Warden was a blond and brachycephalic Alpha-Minus,short, red, moon-faced, and broad-shouldered, with a loudbooming voice, very well adapted to the utterance ofhypnopædic wisdom. He was a mine of irrelevant informationand unasked-for good advice. Once started, he went on andon–boomingly.

"… five hundred and sixty thousand square kilometres,divided into four distinct Sub-Reservations, each surroundedby a high-tension wire fence."

At this moment, and for no apparent reason, Bernard suddenlyremembered that he had left the Eau de Cologne tap in hisbathroom wide open and running.

"… supplied with current from the Grand Canyonhydro-electric station."

"Cost me a fortune by the time I get back." With his mind'seye, Bernard saw the needle on the scent meter creepinground and round, antlike, indefatigable. "Quickly telephoneto Helmholtz Watson."

"… upwards of five thousand kilometres of fencing at sixtythousand volts."

"You don't say so," said Lenina politely, not knowing in theleast what the Warden had said, but taking her cue from hisdramatic pause. When the Warden started booming, she hadinconspicuously swallowed half a gramme of soma, with theresult that she could now sit, serenely not listening,thinking of nothing at all, but with her large blue eyesfixed on the Warden's face in an expression of raptattention.

"To touch the fence is instant death," pronounced the Wardensolemnly. "There is no escape from a Savage Reservation."

The word "escape" was suggestive. "Perhaps," said Bernard,half rising, "we ought to think of going." The little blackneedle was scurrying, an insect, nibbling through time,eating into his money.

"No escape," repeated the Warden, waving him back into hischair; and as the permit was not yet countersigned Bernardhad no choice but to obey. "Those who are born in theReservation–and remember, my dear young lady," he added,leering obscenely at Lenina, and speaking in an improperwhisper, "remember that, in the Reservation, children stillare born, yes, actually born, revolting as that may seem …"(He hoped that this reference to a shameful subject wouldmake Lenina blush; but she only smiled with simulatedintelligence and said, "You don't say so!" Disappointed, the


Warden began again. ) "Those, I repeat who are born in theReservation are destined to die there."

Destined to die … A decilitre of Eau de Cologne everyminute. Six litres an hour. "Perhaps," Bernard tried again,"we ought …"

Leaning forward, the Warden tapped the table with hisforefinger. "You ask me how many people live in theReservation. And I reply"–triumphantly–"I reply that we donot know. We can only guess."

"You don't say so."

"My dear young lady, I do say so."

Six times twenty-four–no, it would be nearer six timesthirty-six. Bernard was pale and trembling with impatience.But inexorably the booming continued.

"… about sixty thousand Indians and half-breeds … absolutesavages … our inspectors occasionally visit … otherwise, nocommunication whatever with the civilized world … stillpreserve their repulsive habits and customs … marriage, ifyou know what that is, my dear young lady; families … noconditioning … monstrous superstitions … Christianity andtotemism and ancestor worship … extinct languages, such asZuñi and Spanish and Athapascan … pumas, porcupines andother ferocious animals … infectious diseases … priests …venomous lizards …"

"You don't say so?"

They got away at last. Bernard dashed to the telephone.Quick, quick; but it took him nearly three minutes to get onto Helmholtz Watson. "We might be among the savagesalready," he complained. "Damned incompetence!"

"Have a gramme," suggested Lenina.

He refused, preferring his anger. And at last, thank Ford,he was through and, yes, it was Helmholtz; Helmholtz, towhom he explained what had happened, and who promised to goround at once, at once, and turn off the tap, yes, at once,but took this opportunity to tell him what the D.H.C. hadsaid, in public, yesterday evening …

"What? He's looking out for some one to take my place?"Bernard's voice was agonized. "So it's actually decided? Didhe mention Iceland? You say he did? Ford! Iceland …" He hungup the receiver and turned back to Lenina. His face waspale, his expression utterly dejected.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"The matter?" He dropped heavily into a chair. "I'm going tobe sent to Iceland."

Often in the past he had wondered what it would be like tobe subjected (soma-less and with nothing but his own inwardresources to rely on) to some great trial, some pain, some


persecution; he had even longed for affliction. As recentlyas a week ago, in the Director's office, he had imaginedhimself courageously resisting, stoically acceptingsuffering without a word. The Director's threats hadactually elated him, made him feel larger than life. Butthat, as he now realized, was because he had not taken thethreats quite seriously, he had not believed that, when itcame to the point, the D.H.C. would ever do anything. Nowthat it looked as though the threats were really to befulfilled, Bernard was appalled. Of that imagined stoicism,that theoretical courage, not a trace was left.

He raged against himself–what a fool!–against theDirector–how unfair not to give him that other chance, thatother chance which, he now had no doubt at all, he hadalways intended to take. And Iceland, Iceland …

Lenina shook her head. "Was and will make me ill," shequoted, "I take a gramme and only am."

In the end she persuaded him to swallow four tablets ofsoma. Five minutes later roots and fruits were abolished;the flower of the present rosily blossomed. A message fromthe porter announced that, at the Warden's orders, aReservation Guard had come round with a plane and waswaiting on the roof of the hotel. They went up at once. Anoctoroon in Gamma-green uniform saluted and proceeded torecite the morning's programme.

A bird's-eye view of ten or a dozen of the principalpueblos, then a landing for lunch in the valley of Malpais.The rest-house was comfortable there, and up at the pueblothe savages would probably be celebrating their summerfestival. It would be the best place to spend the night.

They took their seats in the plane and set off. Ten minuteslater they were crossing the frontier that separatedcivilization from savagery. Uphill and down, across thedeserts of salt or sand, through forests, into the violetdepth of canyons, over crag and peak and table-topped mesa,the fence marched on and on, irresistibly the straight line,the geometrical symbol of triumphant human purpose. And atits foot, here and there, a mosaic of white bones, a stillunrotted carcase dark on the tawny ground marked the placewhere deer or steer, puma or porcupine or coyote, or thegreedy turkey buzzards drawn down by the whiff of carrionand fulminated as though by a poetic justice, had come tooclose to the destroying wires.

"They never learn," said the green-uniformed pilot, pointingdown at the skeletons on the ground below them. "And theynever will learn," he added and laughed, as though he hadsomehow scored a personal triumph over the electrocutedanimals.

Bernard also laughed; after two grammes of soma the jokeseemed, for some reason, good. Laughed and then, almostimmediately, dropped off to sleep, and sleeping was carriedover Taos and Tesuque; over Nambe and Picuris and Pojoaque,over Sia and Cochiti, over Laguna and Acoma and the


Enchanted Mesa, over Zuñi and Cibola and Ojo Caliente, andwoke at last to find the machine standing on the ground,Lenina carrying the suit-cases into a small square house,and the Gamma-green octoroon talking incomprehensibly with ayoung Indian.

"Malpais," explained the pilot, as Bernard stepped out."This is the rest-house. And there's a dance this afternoonat the pueblo. He'll take you there." He pointed to thesullen young savage. "Funny, I expect." He grinned."Everything they do is funny." And with that he climbed intothe plane and started up the engines. "Back to-morrow. Andremember," he added reassuringly to Lenina, "they'reperfectly tame; savages won't do you any harm. They've gotenough experience of gas bombs to know that they mustn'tplay any tricks." Still laughing, he threw the helicopterscrews into gear, accelerated, and was gone.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE MESA was like a ship becalmed in a strait oflion-coloured dust. The channel wound between precipitousbanks, and slanting from one wall to the other across thevalley ran a streak of green-the river and its fields. Onthe prow of that stone ship in the centre of the strait, andseemingly a part of it, a shaped and geometrical outcrop ofthe naked rock, stood the pueblo of Malpais. Block aboveblock, each story smaller than the one below, the tallhouses rose like stepped and amputated pyramids into theblue sky. At their feet lay a straggle of low buildings, acriss-cross of walls; and on three sides the precipices fellsheer into the plain. A few columns of smoke mountedperpendicularly into the windless air and were lost.

"Queer," said Lenina. "Very queer." It was her ordinary wordof condemnation. "I don't like it. And I don't like thatman." She pointed to the Indian guide who had been appointedto take them up to the pueblo. Her feeling was evidentlyreciprocated; the very back of the man, as he walked alongbefore them, was hostile, sullenly contemptuous.

"Besides," she lowered her voice, "he smells."

Bernard did not attempt to deny it. They walked on.

Suddenly it was as though the whole air had come alive andwere pulsing, pulsing with the indefatigable movement ofblood. Up there, in Malpais, the drums were being beaten.Their feet fell in with the rhythm of that mysterious heart;they quickened their pace. Their path led them to the footof the precipice. The sides of the great mesa ship toweredover them, three hundred feet to the gunwale.

"I wish we could have brought the plane," said Lenina,looking up resentfully at the blank impending rock-face. "Ihate walking. And you feel so small when you're on theground at the bottom of a hill."

They walked along for some way in the shadow of the mesa,


rounded a projection, and there, in a water-worn ravine, wasthe way up the companion ladder. They climbed. It was a verysteep path that zigzagged from side to side of the gully.Sometimes the pulsing of the drums was all but inaudible, atothers they seemed to be beating only just round the corner.

When they were half-way up, an eagle flew past so close tothem that the wind of his wings blew chill on their faces.In a crevice of the rock lay a pile of bones. It was alloppressively queer, and the Indian smelt stronger andstronger. They emerged at last from the ravine into the fullsunlight. The top of the mesa was a flat deck of stone.

"Like the Charing-T Tower," was Lenina's comment. But shewas not allowed to enjoy her discovery of this reassuringresemblance for long. A padding of soft feet made them turnround. Naked from throat to navel, their dark brown bodiespainted with white lines ("like asphalt tennis courts,"Lenina was later to explain), their faces inhuman withdaubings of scarlet, black and ochre, two Indians camerunning along the path. Their black hair was braided withfox fur and red flannel. Cloaks of turkey feathers flutteredfrom their shoulders; huge feather diadems exploded gaudilyround their heads. With every step they took came the clinkand rattle of their silver bracelets, their heavy necklacesof bone and turquoise beads. They came on without a word,running quietly in their deerskin moccasins. One of them washolding a feather brush; the other carried, in either hand,what looked at a distance like three or four pieces of thickrope. One of the ropes writhed uneasily, and suddenly Leninasaw that they were snakes.

The men came nearer and nearer; their dark eyes looked ather, but without giving any sign of recognition, anysmallest sign that they had seen her or were aware of herexistence. The writhing snake hung limp again with the rest.The men passed.

"I don't like it," said Lenina. "I don't like it."

She liked even less what awaited her at the entrance to thepueblo, where their guide had left them while he went insidefor instructions. The dirt, to start with, the piles ofrubbish, the dust, the dogs, the flies. Her face wrinkled upinto a grimace of disgust. She held her handkerchief to hernose.

"But how can they live like this?" she broke out in a voiceof indignant incredulity. (It wasn't possible.)

Bernard shrugged his shoulders philosophically. "Anyhow," hesaid, "they've been doing it for the last five or sixthousand years. So I suppose they must be used to it bynow."

"But cleanliness is next to fordliness," she insisted.

"Yes, and civilization is sterilization," Bernard went on,concluding on a tone of irony the second hypnopædic lessonin elementary hygiene. "But these people have never heard ofOur Ford, and they aren't civilized. So there's no point in…"


"Oh!" She gripped his arm. "Look."

An almost naked Indian was very slowly climbing down theladder from the first-floor terrace of a neighboringhouse–rung after rung, with the tremulous caution of extremeold age. His face was profoundly wrinkled and black, like amask of obsidian. The toothless mouth had fallen in. At thecorners of the lips, and on each side of the chin, a fewlong bristles gleamed almost white against the dark skin.The long unbraided hair hung down in grey wisps round hisface. His body was bent and emaciated to the bone, almostfleshless. Very slowly he came down, pausing at each rungbefore he ventured another step.

"What's the matter with him?" whispered Lenina. Her eyeswere wide with horror and amazement.

"He's old, that's all," Bernard answered as carelessly as hecould. He too was startled; but he made an effort to seemunmoved.

"Old?" she repeated. "But the Director's old; lots of peopleare old; they're not like that."

"That's because we don't allow them to be like that. Wepreserve them from diseases. We keep their internalsecretions artificially balanced at a youthful equilibrium.We don't permit their magnesium-calcium ratio to fall belowwhat it was at thirty. We give them transfusion of youngblood. We keep their metabolism permanently stimulated. So,of course, they don't look like that. Partly," he added,"because most of them die long before they reach this oldcreature's age. Youth almost unimpaired till sixty, andthen, crack! the end."

But Lenina was not listening. She was watching the old man.Slowly, slowly he came down. His feet touched the ground. Heturned. In their deep-sunken orbits his eyes were stillextraordinarily bright. They looked at her for a long momentexpressionlessly, without surprise, as though she had notbeen there at all. Then slowly, with bent back the old manhobbled past them and was gone.

"But it's terrible," Lenina whispered. "It's awful. We oughtnot to have come here." She felt in her pocket for hersoma–only to discover that, by some unprecedented oversight,she had left the bottle down at the rest-house. Bernard'spockets were also empty.

Lenina was left to face the horrors of Malpais unaided. Theycame crowding in on her thick and fast. The spectacle of twoyoung women giving breast to their babies made her blush andturn away her face. She had never seen anything so indecentin her life. And what made it worse was that, instead oftactfully ignoring it, Bernard proceeded to make opencomments on this revoltingly viviparous scene. Ashamed, nowthat the effects of the soma had worn off, of the weaknesshe had displayed that morning in the hotel, he went out ofhis way to show himself strong and unorthodox.


"What a wonderfully intimate relationship," he said,deliberately outrageous. "And what an intensity of feelingit must generate! I often think one may have missedsomething in not having had a mother. And perhaps you'vemissed something in not being a mother, Lenina. Imagineyourself sitting there with a little baby of your own. …"

"Bernard! How can you?" The passage of an old woman withophthalmia and a disease of the skin distracted her from herindignation.

"Let's go away," she begged. "I don't like it."

But at this moment their guide came back and, beckoning themto follow, led the way down the narrow street between thehouses. They rounded a corner. A dead dog was lying on arubbish heap; a woman with a goitre was looking for lice inthe hair of a small girl. Their guide halted at the foot ofa ladder, raised his hand perpendicularly, then darted ithorizontally forward. They did what he mutelycommanded–climbed the ladder and walked through the doorway,to which it gave access, into a long narrow room, ratherdark and smelling of smoke and cooked grease and long-worn,long-unwashed clothes. At the further end of the room wasanother doorway, through which came a shaft of sundight andthe noise, very loud and close, of the drums.

They stepped across the threshold and found themselves on awide terrace. Below them, shut in by the tall houses, wasthe village square, crowded with Indians. Bright blankets,and feathers in black hair, and the glint of turquoise, anddark skins shining with heat. Lenina put her handkerchief toher nose again. In the open space at the centre of thesquare were two circular platforms of masonry and trampledclay–the roofs, it was evident, of underground chambers; forin the centre of each platform was an open hatchway, with aladder emerging from the lower darkness. A sound ofsubterranean flute playing came up and was almost lost inthe steady remorseless persistence of the drums.

Lenina liked the drums. Shutting her eyes she abandonedherself to their soft repeated thunder, allowed it to invadeher consciousness more and more completely, till at lastthere was nothing left in the world but that one deep pulseof sound. It reminded her reassuringly of the syntheticnoises made at Solidarity Services and Ford's Daycelebrations. "Orgy-porgy," she whispered to herself. Thesedrums beat out just the same rhythms.

There was a sudden startling burst of singing–hundreds ofmale voices crying out fiercely in harsh metallic unison. Afew long notes and silence, the thunderous silence of thedrums; then shrill, in a neighing treble, the women'sanswer. Then again the drums; and once more the men's deepsavage affirmation of their manhood.

Queer–yes. The place was queer, so was the music, so werethe clothes and the goitres and the skin diseases and theold people. But the performance itself–there seemed to benothing specially queer about that.


"It reminds me of a lower-caste Community Sing," she toldBernard.

But a little later it was reminding her a good deal less ofthat innocuous function. For suddenly there had swarmed upfrom those round chambers underground a ghastly troop ofmonsters. Hideously masked or painted out of all semblanceof humanity, they had tramped out a strange limping danceround the square; round and again round, singing as theywent, round and round–each time a little faster; and thedrums had changed and quickened their rhythm, so that itbecame like the pulsing of fever in the ears; and the crowdhad begun to sing with the dancers, louder and louder; andfirst one woman had shrieked, and then another and another,as though they were being killed; and then suddenly theleader of the dancers broke out of the line, ran to a bigwooden chest which was standing at one end of the square,raised the lid and pulled out a pair of black snakes. Agreat yell went up from the crowd, and all the other dancersran towards him with out-stretched hands. He tossed thesnakes to the first-comers, then dipped back into the chestfor more. More and more, black snakes and brown andmottled-he flung them out. And then the dance began again ona different rhythm. Round and round they went with theirsnakes, snakily, with a soft undulating movement at theknees and hips. Round and round. Then the leader gave asignal, and one after another, all the snakes were flungdown in the middle of the square; an old man came up fromunderground and sprinkled them with corn meal, and from theother hatchway came a woman and sprinkled them with waterfrom a black jar. Then the old man lifted his hand and,startlingly, terrifyingly, there was absolute silence. Thedrums stopped beating, life seemed to have come to an end.The old man pointed towards the two hatchways that gaveentrance to the lower world. And slowly, raised by invisiblehands from below, there emerged from the one a painted imageof an eagle, from the other that of a man, naked, and nailedto a cross. They hung there, seemingly self-sustained, asthough watching. The old man clapped his hands. Naked butfor a white cotton breech-cloth, a boy of about eighteenstepped out of the crowd and stood before him, his handscrossed over his chest, his head bowed. The old man made thesign of the cross over him and turned away. Slowly, the boybegan to walk round the writhing heap of snakes. He hadcompleted the first circuit and was half-way through thesecond when, from among the dancers, a tall man wearing themask of a coyote and holding in his hand a whip of plaitedleather, advanced towards him. The boy moved on as thoughunaware of the other's existence. The coyote-man raised hiswhip, there was a long moment of expectancy, then a swiftmovement, the whistle of the lash and its loud flat-soundingimpact on the flesh. The boy's body quivered; but he made nosound, he walked on at the same slow, steady pace. Thecoyote struck again, again; and at every blow at first agasp, and then a deep groan went up from the crowd. The boywalked. Twice, thrice, four times round he went. The bloodwas streaming. Five times round, six times round. SuddenlyLenina covered her face shish her hands and began to sob."Oh, stop them, stop them!" she implored. But the whip felland fell inexorably. Seven times round. Then all at once theboy staggered and, still without a sound, pitched forward onto his face. Bending over him, the old man touched his back


with a long white feather, held it up for a moment, crimson,for the people to see then shook it thrice over the snakes.A few drops fell, and suddenly the drums broke out againinto a panic of hurrying notes; there was a great shout. Thedancers rushed forward, picked up the snakes and ran out ofthe square. Men, women, children, all the crowd ran afterthem. A minute later the square was empty, only the boyremained, prone where he had fallen, quite still. Three oldwomen came out of one of the houses, and with somedifficulty lifted him and carried him in. The eagle and theman on the cross kept guard for a little while over theempty pueblo; then, as though they had seen enough, sankslowly down through their hatchways, out of sight, into thenether world.

Lenina was still sobbing. "Too awful," she kept repeating,and all Bernard's consolations were in vain. "Too awful!That blood!" She shuddered. "Oh, I wish I had my soma."

There was the sound of feet in the inner room.

Lenina did not move, but sat with her face in her hands,unseeing, apart. Only Bernard turned round.

The dress of the young man who now stepped out on to theterrace was Indian; but his plaited hair was straw-coloured,his eyes a pale blue, and his skin a white skin, bronzed.

"Hullo. Good-morrow," said the stranger, in faultless butpeculiar English. "You're civilized, aren't you? You comefrom the Other Place, outside the Reservation?"

"Who on earth … ?" Bernard began in astonishment.

The young man sighed and shook his head. "A most unhappygentleman." And, pointing to the bloodstains in the centreof the square, "Do you see that damned spot?" he asked in avoice that trembled with emotion.

"A gramme is better than a damn," said Lenina mechanicallyfrom behind her hands. "I wish I had my soma!"

"I ought to have been there," the young man went on. "Whywouldn't they let me be the sacrifice? I'd have gone roundten times–twelve, fifteen. Palowhtiwa only got as far asseven. They could have had twice as much blood from me. Themultitudinous seas incarnadine." He flung out his arms in alavish gesture; then, despairingly, let them fall again."But they wouldn't let me. They disliked me for mycomplexion. It's always been like that. Always." Tears stoodin the young man's eyes; he was ashamed and turned away.

Astonishment made Lenina forget the deprivation of soma. Sheuncovered her face and, for the first time, looked at thestranger. "Do you mean to say that you wanted to be hit withthat whip?"

Still averted from her, the young man made a sign ofaffirmation. "For the sake of the pueblo–to make the rain


come and the corn grow. And to please Pookong and Jesus. Andthen to show that I can bear pain without crying out. Yes,"and his voice suddenly took on a new resonance, he turnedwith a proud squaring of the shoulders, a proud, defiantlifting of the chin "to show that I'm a man … Oh!" He gave agasp and was silent, gaping. He had seen, for the first timein his life, the face of a girl whose cheeks were not thecolour of chocolate or dogskin, whose hair was auburn andpermanently waved, and whose expression (amazing novelty!)was one of benevolent interest. Lenina was smiling at him;such a nice-looking boy, she was thinking, and a reallybeautiful body. The blood rushed up into the young man'sface; he dropped his eyes, raised them again for a momentonly to find her still smiling at him, and was so muchovercome that he had to turn away and pretend to be lookingvery hard at something on the other side of the square.

Bernard's questions made a diversion. Who? How? When? Fromwhere? Keeping his eyes fixed on Bernard's face (for sopassionately did he long to see Lenina smiling that hesimply dared not look at her), the young man tried toexplain himself. Linda and he–Linda was his mother (the wordmade Lenina look uncomfortable)–were strangers in theReservation. Linda had come from the Other Place long ago,before he was born, with a man who was his father. (Bernardpricked up his ears.) She had gone walking alone in thosemountains over there to the North, had fallen down a steepplace and hurt her head. ("Go on, go on," said Bernardexcitedly.) Some hunters from Malpais had found her andbrought her to the pueblo. As for the man who was hisfather, Linda had never seen him again. His name wasTomakin. (Yes, "Thomas" was the D.H.C.'s first name.) Hemust have flown away, back to the Other Place, away withouther–a bad, unkind, unnatural man.

"And so I was born in Malpais," he concluded. "In Malpais."And he shook his head.

The squalor of that little house on the outskirts of thepueblo!

A space of dust and rubbish separated it from the village.Two famine-stricken dogs were nosing obscenely in thegarbage at its door. Inside, when they entered, the twilightstank and was loud with flies.

"Linda!" the young man called.

From the inner room a rather hoarse female voice said,"Coming."

They waited. In bowls on the floor were the remains of ameal, perhaps of several meals.

The door opened. A very stout blonde squaw stepped acrossthe threshold and stood looking at the strangers staringincredulously, her mouth open. Lenina noticed with disgustthat two of the front teeth were missing. And the colour ofthe ones that remained … She shuddered. It was worse thanthe old man. So fat. And all the lines in her face, theflabbiness, the wrinkles. And the sagging cheeks, with those


purplish blotches. And the red veins on her nose, thebloodshot eyes. And that neck–that neck; and the blanket shewore over her head–ragged and filthy. And under the brownsack-shaped tunic those enormous breasts, the bulge of thestomach, the hips. Oh, much worse than the old man, muchworse! And suddenly the creature burst out in a torrent ofspeech, rushed at her with outstretched arms and–Ford! Ford!it was too revolting, in another moment she'd besick–pressed her against the bulge, the bosom, and began tokiss her. Ford! to kiss, slobberingly, and smelt toohorrible, obviously never had a bath, and simply reeked ofthat beastly stuff that was put into Delta and Epsilonbottles (no, it wasn't true about Bernard), positively stankof alcohol. She broke away as quickly as she could.

A blubbered and distorted face confronted her; the creaturewas crying.

"Oh, my dear, my dear." The torrent of words flowedsobbingly. "If you knew how glad–after all these years! Acivilized face. Yes, and civilized clothes. Because Ithought I should never see a piece of real acetate silkagain." She fingered the sleeve of Lenina's shirt. The nailswere black. "And those adorable viscose velveteen shorts! Doyou know, dear, I've still got my old clothes, the ones Icame in, put away in a box. I'll show them you afterwards.Though, of course, the acetate has all gone into holes. Butsuch a lovely white bandolier–though I must say your greenmorocco is even lovelier. Not that it did me much good, thatbandolier." Her tears began to flow again. "I suppose Johntold you. What I had to suffer–and not a gramme of soma tobe had. Only a drink of mescal every now and then, when Popéused to bring it. Popé is a boy I used to know. But it makesyou feel so bad afterwards. the mescal does, and you're sickwith the peyotl; besides it always made that awful feelingof being ashamed much worse the next day. And I was soashamed. Just think of it: me, a Beta–having a baby: putyourself in my place." (The mere suggestion made Leninashudder.) "Though it wasn't my fault, I swear; because Istill don't know how it happened, seeing that I did all theMalthusian Drill–you know, by numbers, One, two, three,four, always, I swear it; but all the same it happened, andof course there wasn't anything like an Abortion Centrehere. Is it still down in Chelsea, by the way?" she asked.Lenina nodded. "And still floodlighted on Tuesdays andFridays?" Lenina nodded again. "That lovely pink glasstower!" Poor Linda lifted her face and with closed eyesecstatically contemplated the bright remembered image. "Andthe river at night," she whispered. Great tears oozed slowlyout from behind her tight-shut eyelids. "And flying back inthe evening from Stoke Poges. And then a hot bath andvibro-vacuum massage … But there." She drew a deep breath,shook her head, opened her eyes again, sniffed once ortwice, then blew her nose on her fingers and wiped them onthe skirt of her tunic. "Oh, I'm so sorry," she said inresponse to Lenina's involuntary grimace of disgust. "Ioughtn't to have done that. I'm sorry. But what are you todo when there aren't any handkerchiefs? I remember how itused to upset me, all that dirt, and nothing being aseptic.I had an awful cut on my head when they first brought mehere. You can't imagine what they used to put on it. Filth,


just filth. 'Civilization is Sterilization,' I used to say tthem. And 'Streptocock-Gee to Banbury-T, to see a finebathroom and W.C.' as though they were children. But ofcourse they didn't understand. How should they? And in theend I suppose I got used to it. And anyhow, how can you keepthings clean when there isn't hot water laid on? And look atthese clothes. This beastly wool isn't like acetate. Itlasts and lasts. And you're supposed to mend it if it getstorn. But I'm a Beta; I worked in the Fertilizing Room;nobody ever taught me to do anything like that. It wasn't mybusiness. Besides, it never used to be right to mendclothes. Throw them away when they've got holes in them andbuy new. 'The more stitches, the less riches.' Isn't thatright? Mending's anti-social. But it's all different here.It's like living with lunatics. Everything they do is mad."She looked round; saw John and Bernard had left them andwere walking up and down in the dust and garbage outside thehouse; but, none the less confidentially lowering her voice,and leaning, while Lenina stiffened and shrank, so closethat the blown reek of embryo-poison stirred the hair on hercheek. "For instance," she hoarsely whispered, "take the waythey have one another here. Mad, I tell you, absolutely mad.Everybody belongs to every one else–don't they? don't they?"she insisted, tugging at Lenina's sleeve. Lenina nodded heraverted head, let out the breath she had been holding andmanaged to draw another one, relatively untainted. "Well,here," the other went on, "nobody's supposed to belong tomore than one person. And if you have people in the ordinaryway, the others think you're wicked and anti-social. Theyhate and despise you. Once a lot of women came and made ascene because their men came to see me. Well, why not? Andthen they rushed at me … No, it was too awful. I can't tellyou about it." Linda covered her face with her hands andshuddered. "They're so hateful, the women here. Mad, mad andcruel. And of course they don't know anything aboutMalthusian Drill, or bottles, or decanting, or anything ofthat sort. So they're having children all the time–likedogs. It's too revolting. And to think that I … Oh, Ford,Ford, Ford! And yet John was a great comfort to me. I don'tknow what I should have done without him. Even though he didget so upset whenever a man … Quite as a tiny boy, even.Once (but that was when he was bigger) he tried to kill poorWaihusiwa–or was it Popé?–just because I used to have themsometimes. Because I never could make him understand thatthat was what civilized people ought to do. Being mad'sinfectious I believe. Anyhow, John seems to have caught itfrom the Indians. Because, of course, he was with them alot. Even though they always were so beastly to him andwouldn't let him do all the things the other boys did. Whichwas a good thing in a way, because it made it easier for meto condition him a little. Though you've no idea howdifficult that is. There's so much one doesn't know; itwasn't my business to know. I mean, when a child asks youhow a helicopter works or who made the world–well, what areyou to answer if you're a Beta and have always worked in theFertilizing Room? What are you to answer?"

CHAPTER EIGHT

OUTSIDE, in the dust and among the garbage (there were four


dogs now), Bernard and John were walking slowly up and down.

"So hard for me to realize," Bernard was saying, "toreconstruct. As though we were living on different planets,in different centuries. A mother, and all this dirt, andgods, and old age, and disease …" He shook his head. "It'salmost inconceivable. I shall never understand, unless youexplain."

"Explain what?"

"This." He indicated the pueblo. "That." And it was thelittle house outside the village. "Everything. All yourlife."

"But what is there to say?"

"From the beginning. As far back as you can remember."

"As far back as I can remember." John frowned. There was along silence.

It was very hot. They had eaten a lot of tortillas and sweetcorn. Linda said, "Come and lie down, Baby." They lay downtogether in the big bed. "Sing," and Linda sang. Sang"Streptocock-Gee to Banbury-T" and "Bye Baby Banting, soonyou'll need decanting." Her voice got fainter and fainter …

There was a loud noise, and he woke with a start. A man wassaying something to Linda, and Linda was laughing. She hadpulled the blanket up to her chin, but the man pulled itdown again. His hair was like two black ropes, and round hisarm was a lovely silver bracelet with blue stones in it. Heliked the bracelet; but all the same, he was frightened; hehid his face against Linda's body. Linda put her hand on himand he felt safer. In those other words he did notunderstand so well, she said to the man, "Not with Johnhere." The man looked at him, then again at Linda, and saida few words in a soft voice. Linda said, "No." But the manbent over the bed towards him and his face was huge,terrible; the black ropes of hair touched the blanket. "No,"Linda said again, and he felt her hand squeezing him moretightly. "No, no!" But the man took hold of one of his arms,and it hurt. He screamed. The man put up his other hand andlifted him up. Linda was still holding him, still saying,"No, no." The man said something short and angry, andsuddenly her hands were gone. "Linda, Linda." He kicked andwriggled; but the man carried him across to the door, openedit, put him down on the floor in the middle of the otherroom, and went away, shutting the door behind him. He gotup, he ran to the door. Standing on tiptoe he could justreach the big wooden latch. He lifted it and pushed; but thedoor wouldn't open. "Linda," he shouted. She didn't answer.

He remembered a huge room, rather dark; and there were bigwooden things with strings fastened to them, and lots ofwomen standing round them–making blankets, Linda said. Lindatold him to sit in the corner with the other children, whileshe went and helped the women. He played with the littleboys for a long time. Suddenly people started talking veryloud, and there were the women pushing Linda away, and Lindawas crying. She went to the door and he ran after her. He


asked her why they were angry. "Because I broke something,"she said. And then she got angry too. "How should I know howto do their beastly weaving?" she said. "Beastly savages."He asked her what savages were. When they got back to theirhouse, Popé was waiting at the door, and he came in withthem. He had a big gourd full of stuff that looked likewater; only it wasn't water, but something with a bad smellthat burnt your mouth and made you cough. Linda drank someand Popé drank some, and then Linda laughed a lot and talkedvery loud; and then she and Popé went into the other room.When Popé went away, he went into the room. Linda was in bedand so fast asleep that he couldn't wake her.

Popé used to come often. He said the stuff in the gourd wascalled mescal; but Linda said it ought to be called soma;only it made you feel ill afterwards. He hated Popé. Hehated them all–all the men who came to see Linda. Oneafternoon, when he had been playing with the otherchildren–it was cold, he remembered, and there was snow onthe mountains–he came back to the house and heard angryvoices in the bedroom. They were women's voices, and theysaid words he didn't understand, but he knew they weredreadful words. Then suddenly, crash! something was upset;he heard people moving about quickly, and there was anothercrash and then a noise like hitting a mule, only not sobony; then Linda screamed. "Oh, don't, don't, don't!" shesaid. He ran in. There were three women in dark blankets.Linda was on the bed. One of the women was holding herwrists. Another was lying across her legs, so that shecouldn't kick. The third was hitting her with a whip. Once,twice, three times; and each time Linda screamed. Crying, hetugged at the fringe of the woman's blanket. "Please,please." With her free hand she held him away. The whip camedown again, and again Linda screamed. He caught hold of thewoman's enormous brown hand between his own and bit it withall his might. She cried out, wrenched her hand free, andgave him such a push that he fell down. While he was lyingon the ground she hit him three times with the whip. It hurtmore than anything he had ever felt–like fire. The whipwhistled again, fell. But this time it was Linda whoscreamed.

"But why did they want to hurt you, Linda?'' he asked thatnight. He was crying, because the red marks of the whip onhis back still hurt so terribly. But he was also cryingbecause people were so beastly and unfair, and because hewas only a little boy and couldn't do anything against them.Linda was crying too. She was grown up, but she wasn't bigenough to fight against three of them. It wasn't fair forher either. "Why did they want to hurt you, Linda?"

"I don't know. How should I know?" It was difficult to hearwhat she said, because she was lying on her stomach and herface was in the pillow. "They say those men are their men,"she went on; and she did not seem to be talking to him atall; she seemed to be talking with some one inside herself.A long talk which she didn't understand; and in the end shestarted crying louder than ever.

"Oh, don't cry, Linda. Don't cry."


He pressed himself against her. He put his arm round herneck. Linda cried out. "Oh, be careful. My shoulder! Oh!"and she pushed him away, hard. His head banged against thewall. "Little idiot!" she shouted; and then, suddenly, shebegan to slap him. Slap, slap …

"Linda," he cried out. "Oh, mother, don't!"

"I'm not your mother. I won't be your mother."

"But, Linda … Oh!" She slapped him on the cheek.

"Turned into a savage," she shouted. "Having young ones likean animal … If it hadn't been for you, I might have gone tothe Inspector, I might have got away. But not with a baby.That would have been too shameful."

He saw that she was going to hit him again, and lifted hisarm to guard his face. "Oh, don't, Linda, please don't."

"Little beast!" She pulled down his arm; his face wasuncovered.

"Don't, Linda." He shut his eyes, expecting the blow.

But she didn't hit him. After a little time, he opened hiseyes again and saw that she was looking at him. He tried tosmile at her. Suddenly she put her arms round him and kissedhim again and again.

Sometimes, for several days, Linda didn't get up at all. Shelay in bed and was sad. Or else she drank the stuff thatPopé brought and laughed a great deal and went to sleep.Sometimes she was sick. Often she forgot to wash him, andthere was nothing to eat except cold tortillas. Heremembered the first time she found those little animals inhis hair, how she screamed and screamed.

The happiest times were when she told him about the OtherPlace. "And you really can go flying, whenever you like?"

"Whenever you like." And she would tell him about the lovelymusic that came out of a box, and all the nice games youcould play, and the delicious things to eat and drink, andthe light that came when you pressed a little thing in thewall, and the pictures that you could hear and feel andsmell, as well as see, and another box for making nicesmells, and the pink and green and blue and silver houses ashigh as mountains, and everybody happy and no one ever sador angry, and every one belonging to every one else, and theboxes where you could see and hear what was happening at theother side of the world, and babies in lovely cleanbottles–everything so clean, and no nasty smells, no dirt atall–and people never lonely, but living together and beingso jolly and happy, like the summer dances here in Malpais,but much happier, and the happiness being there every day,every day. … He listened by the hour. And sometimes, when heand the other children were tired with too much playing, oneof the old men of the pueblo would talk to them, in thoseother words, of the great Transformer of the World, and of


the long fight between Right Hand and Left Hand, between Wetand Dry; of Awonawilona, who made a great fog by thinking inthe night, and then made the whole world out of the fog; ofEarth Mother and Sky Father; of Ahaiyuta and Marsailema, thetwins of War and Chance; of Jesus and Pookong; of Mary andEtsanatlehi, the woman who makes herself young again; of theBlack Stone at Laguna and the Great Eagle and Our Lady ofAcoma. Strange stories, all the more wonderful to him forbeing told in the other words and so not fully understood.Lying in bed, he would think of Heaven and London and OurLady of Acoma and the rows and rows of babies in cleanbottles and Jesus flying up and Linda flying up and thegreat Director of World Hatcheries and Awonawilona.

Lots of men came to see Linda. The boys began to point theirfingers at him. In the strange other words they said thatLinda was bad; they called her names he did not understand,but that he knew were bad names. One day they sang a songabout her, again and again. He threw stones at them. Theythrew back; a sharp stone cut his cheek. The blood wouldn'tstop; he was covered with blood.

Linda taught him to read. With a piece of charcoal she drewpictures on the wall–an animal sitting down, a baby inside abottle; then she wrote letters. THE CAT IS ON THE MAT. THETOT IS IN THE POT. He learned quickly and easily. When heknew how to read all the words she wrote on the wall, Lindaopened her big wooden box and pulled out from under thosefunny little red trousers she never wore a thin little book.He had often seen it before. "When you're bigger," she hadsaid, "you can read it." Well, now he was big enough. He wasproud. "I'm afraid you won't find it very exciting," shesaid. "But it's the only thing I have." She sighed. "If onlyyou could see the lovely reading machines we used to have inLondon!" He began reading. The Chemical and BacteriologicalConditioning of the Embryo. Practical Instructions for BetaEmbryo-Store Workers. It took him a quarter of an hour toread the title alone. He threw the book on the floor."Beastly, beastly book!" he said, and began to cry.

The boys still sang their horrible song about Linda.Sometimes, too, they laughed at him for being so ragged.When he tore his clothes, Linda did not know how to mendthem. In the Other Place, she told him, people threw awayclothes with holes in them and got new ones. "Rags, rags!"the boys used to shout at him. "But I can read," he said tohimself, "and they can't. They don't even know what readingis." It was fairly easy, if he thought hard enough about thereading, to pretend that he didn't mind when they made funof him. He asked Linda to give him the book again.

The more the boys pointed and sang, the harder he read. Soonhe could read all the words quite well. Even the longest.But what did they mean? He asked Linda; but even when shecould answer it didn't seem to make it very clear, Andgenerally she couldn't answer at all.

"What are chemicals?" he would ask.


"Oh, stuff like magnesium salts, and alcohol for keeping theDeltas and Epsilons small and backward, and calciumcarbonate for bones, and all that sort of thing."

"But how do you make chemicals, Linda? Where do they comefrom?"

"Well, I don't know. You get them out of bottles. And whenthe bottles are empty, you send up to the Chemical Store formore. It's the Chemical Store people who make them, Isuppose. Or else they send to the factory for them. I don'tknow. I never did any chemistry. My job was always with theembryos. It was the same with everything else he askedabout. Linda never seemed to know. The old men of the pueblohad much more definite answers.

"The seed of men and all creatures, the seed of the sun andthe seed of earth and the seed of the sky–Awonawilona madethem all out of the Fog of Increase. Now the world has fourwombs; and he laid the seeds in the lowest of the fourwombs. And gradually the seeds began to grow …"

One day (John calculated later that it must have been soonafter his twelfth birthday) he came home and found a bookthat he had never seen before lying on the floor in thebedroom. It was a thick book and looked very old. Thebinding had been eaten by mice; some of its pages were looseand crumpled. He picked it up, looked at the title-page: thebook was called The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.

Linda was lying on the bed, sipping that horrible stinkingmescal out of a cup. "Popé brought it," she said. Her voicewas thick and hoarse like somebody else's voice. "It waslying in one of the chests of the Antelope Kiva. It'ssupposed to have been there for hundreds of years. I expectit's true, because I looked at it, and it seemed to be fullof nonsense. Uncivilized. Still, it'll be good enough foryou to practice your reading on." She took a last sip, setthe cup down on the floor beside the bed, turned over on herside, hiccoughed once or twice and went to sleep.

He opened the book at random.

Nay, but to live In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love Over thenasty sty …

The strange words rolled through his mind; rumbled, liketalking thunder; like the drums at the summer dances, if thedrums could have spoken; like the men singing the Corn Song,beautiful, beautiful, so that you cried; like old Mitsimasaying magic over his feathers and his carved sticks and hisbits of bone and stone–kiathla tsilu silokwe silokwesilokwe. Kiai silu silu, tsithl–but better than Mitsima'smagic, because it meant more, because it talked to him,talked wonderfully and only half-understandably, a terriblebeautiful magic, about Linda; about Linda lying there


snoring, with the empty cup on the floor beside the bed;about Linda and Popé, Linda and Popé.

He hated Popé more and more. A man can smile and smile andbe a villain. Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindlessvillain. What did the words exactly mean? He only half knew.But their magic was strong and went on rumbling in his head,and somehow it was as though he had never really hated Popébefore; never really hated him because he had never beenable to say how much he hated him. But now he had thesewords, these words like drums and singing and magic. Thesewords and the strange, strange story out of which they weretaken (he couldn't make head or tail of it, but it waswonderful, wonderful all the same)–they gave him a reasonfor hating Popé; and they made his hatred more real; theyeven made Popé himself more real.

One day, when he came in from playing, the door of the innerroom was open, and he saw them lying together on the bed,asleep–white Linda and Popé almost black beside her, withone arm under her shoulders and the other dark hand on herbreast, and one of the plaits of his long hair lying acrossher throat, like a black snake trying to strangle her.Popé's gourd and a cup were standing on the floor near thebed. Linda was snoring.

His heart seemed to have disappeared and left a hole. He wasempty. Empty, and cold, and rather sick, and giddy. Heleaned against the wall to steady himself. Remorseless,treacherous, lecherous … Like drums, like the men singingfor the corn, like magic, the words repeated and repeatedthemselves in his head. From being cold he was suddenly hot.His cheeks burnt with the rush of blood, the room swam anddarkened before his eyes. He ground his teeth. "I'll killhim, I'll kill him, I'll kill him," he kept saying. Andsuddenly there were more words.

When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage Or in the incestuouspleasure of his bed …

The magic was on his side, the magic explained and gaveorders. He stepped back in the outer room. "When he is drunkasleep …" The knife for the meat was lying on the floor nearthe fireplace. He picked it up and tiptoed to the dooragain. "When he is drunk asleep, drunk asleep …" He ranacross the room and stabbed–oh, the blood!–stabbed again, asPopé heaved out of his sleep, lifted his hand to stab oncemore, but found his wrist caught, held and–oh, oh!–twisted.He couldn't move, he was trapped, and there were Popé'ssmall black eyes, very close, staring into his own. Helooked away. There were two cuts on Popé's left shoulder."Oh, look at the blood!" Linda was crying. "Look at theblood!" She had never been able to bear the sight of blood.Popé lifted his other hand–to strike him, he thought. Hestiffened to receive the blow. But the hand only took himunder the chin and turned his face, so that he had to lookagain into Popé's eyes. For a long time, for hours andhours. And suddenly–he couldn't help it–he began to cry.Popé burst out laughing. "Go," he said, in the other Indianwords. "Go, my brave Ahaiyuta." He ran out into the other


room to hide his tears.

"You are fifteen," said old Mitsima, in the Indian words."Now I may teach you to work the clay."

Squatting by the river, they worked together.

"First of all," said Mitsima, taking a lump of the wettedclay between his hands, "we make a little moon." The old mansqueezed the lump into a disk, then bent up the edges, themoon became a shallow cup.

Slowly and unskilfully he imitated the old man's delicategestures.

"A moon, a cup, and now a snake." Mitsima rolled out anotherpiece of clay into a long flexible cylinder, trooped it intoa circle and pressed it on to the rim of the cup. "Thenanother snake. And another. And another." Round by round,Mitsima built up the sides of the pot; it was narrow, itbulged, it narrowed again towards the neck. Mitsima squeezedand patted, stroked and scraped; and there at last it stood,in shape the familiar water pot of Malpais, but creamy whiteinstead of black, and still soft to the touch. The crookedparody of Mitsima's, his own stood beside it. Looking at thetwo pots, he had to laugh.

"But the next one will be better," he said, and began tomoisten another piece of clay.

To fashion, to give form, to feel his fingers gaining inskill and power–this gave him an extraordinary pleasure. "A,B, C, Vitamin D," he sang to himself as he worked. "Thefat's in the liver, the cod's in the sea." And Mitsima alsosang–a song about killing a bear. They worked all day, andall day he was filled with an intense, absorbing happiness.

"Next winter," said old Mitsima, "I will teach you to makethe bow."

He stood for a long time outside the house, and at last theceremonies within were finished. The door opened; they cameout. Kothlu came first, his right hand out-stretched andtightly closed, as though over some precious jewel. Herclenched hand similarly outstretched, Kiakimé followed. Theywalked in silence, and in silence, behind them, came thebrothers and sisters and cousins and all the troop of oldpeople.

They walked out of the pueblo, across the mesa. At the edgeof the cliff they halted, facing the early morning sun.Kothlu opened his hand. A pinch of corn meal lay white onthe palm; he breathed on it, murmured a few words, thenthrew it, a handful of white dust, towards the sun. Kiakimédid the same. Then Khakimé's father stepped forward, andholding up a feathered prayer stick, made a long prayer,then threw the stick after the corn meal.

"It is finished," said old Mitsima in a loud voice. "Theyare married."


"Well," said Linda, as they turned away, "all I can say is,it does seem a lot of fuss to make about so little. Incivilized countries, when a boy wants to have a girl, hejust … But where are you going, John?"

He paid no attention to her calling, but ran on, away, away,anywhere to be by himself.

It is finished Old Mitsima's words repeated themselves inhis mind. Finished, finished … In silence and from a longway off, but violently, desperately, hopelessly, he hadloved Kiakimé. And now it was finished. He was sixteen.

At the full moon, in the Antelope Kiva, secrets would betold, secrets would be done and borne. They would go down,boys, into the kiva and come out again, men. The boys wereall afraid and at the same time impatient. And at last itwas the day. The sun went down, the moon rose. He went withthe others. Men were standing, dark, at the entrance to thekiva; the ladder went down into the red lighted depths.Already the leading boys had begun to climb down. Suddenly,one of the men stepped forward, caught him by the arm, andpulled him out of the ranks. He broke free and dodged backinto his place among the others. This time the man struckhim, pulled his hair. "Not for you, white-hair!" "Not forthe son of the she-dog," said one of the other men. The boyslaughed. "Go!" And as he still hovered on the fringes of thegroup, "Go!" the men shouted again. One of them bent down,took a stone, threw it. "Go, go, go!" There was a shower ofstones. Bleeding, he ran away into the darkness. From thered-lit kiva came the noise of singing. The last of the boyshad climbed down the ladder. He was all alone.

All alone, outside the pueblo, on the bare plain of themesa. The rock was like bleached bones in the moonlight.Down in the valley, the coyotes were howling at the moon.The bruises hurt him, the cuts were still bleeding; but itwas not for pain that he sobbed; it was because he was allalone, because he had been driven out, alone, into thisskeleton world of rocks and moonlight. At the edge of theprecipice he sat down. The moon was behind him; he lookeddown into the black shadow of the mesa, into the blackshadow of death. He had only to take one step, one littlejump. … He held out his right hand in the moonlight. Fromthe cut on his wrist the blood was still oozing. Every fewseconds a drop fell, dark, almost colourless in the deadlight. Drop, drop, drop. To-morrow and to-morrow andto-morrow …

He had discovered Time and Death and God.

"Alone, always alone," the young man was saying.

The words awoke a plaintive echo in Bernard's mind. Alone,alone … "So am I," he said, on a gush of confidingness."Terribly alone."

"Are you?" John looked surprised. "I thought that in theOther Place … I mean, Linda always said that nobody was ever


alone there."

Bernard blushed uncomfortably. "You see," he said, mumblingand with averted eyes, "I'm rather different from mostpeople, I suppose. If one happens to be decanted different…"

"Yes, that's just it." The young man nodded. "If one'sdifferent, one's bound to be lonely. They're beastly to one.Do you know, they shut me out of absolutely everything? Whenthe other boys were sent out to spend the night on themountains–you know, when you have to dream which your sacredanimal is–they wouldn't let me go with the others; theywouldn't tell me any of the secrets. I did it by myself,though," he added. "Didn't eat anything for five days andthen went out one night alone into those mountains there."He pointed.

Patronizingly, Bernard smiled. "And did you dream ofanything?" he asked.

The other nodded. "But I mustn't tell you what." He wassilent for a little; then, in a low voice, "Once," he wenton, "I did something that none of the others did: I stoodagainst a rock in the middle of the day, in summer, with myarms out, like Jesus on the Cross."

"What on earth for?"

"I wanted to know what it was like being crucified. Hangingthere in the sun …"

"But why?"

"Why? Well …" He hesitated. "Because I felt I ought to. IfJesus could stand it. And then, if one has done somethingwrong … Besides, I was unhappy; that was another reason."

"It seems a funny way of curing your unhappiness," saidBernard. But on second thoughts he decided that there was,after all, some sense in it. Better than taking soma …

"I fainted after a time," said the young man. "Fell down onmy face. Do you see the mark where I cut myself?" He liftedthe thick yellow hair from his forehead. The scar showed,pale and puckered, on his right temple.

Bernard looked, and then quickly, with a little shudder,averted his eyes. His conditioning had made him not so muchpitiful as profoundly squeamish. The mere suggestion ofillness or wounds was to him not only horrifying, but evenrepulsive and rather disgusting. Like dirt, or deformity, orold age. Hastily he changed the subject.

"I wonder if you'd like to come back to London with us?" heasked, making the first move in a campaign whose strategy hehad been secretly elaborating ever since, in the littlehouse, he had realized who the "father" of this young savagemust be. "Would you like that?"

The young man's face lit up. "Do you really mean it?"


"Of course; if I can get permission, that is."

"Linda too?"

"Well …" He hesitated doubtfully. That revolting creature!No, it was impossible. Unless, unless … It suddenly occurredto Bernard that her very revoltingness might prove anenormous asset. "But of course!" he cried, making up for hisfirst hesitations with an excess of noisy cordiality.

The young man drew a deep breath. "To think it should becoming true–what I've dreamt of all my life. Do you rememberwhat Miranda says?"

"Who's Miranda?"

But the young man had evidently not heard the question. "Owonder!" he was saying; and his eyes shone, his face wasbrightly flushed. "How many goodly creatures are there here!How beauteous mankind is!" The flush suddenly deepened; hewas thinking of Lenina, of an angel in bottle-green viscose,lustrous with youth and skin food, plump, benevolentlysmiling. His voice faltered. "O brave new world," he began,then-suddenly interrupted himself; the blood had left hischeeks; he was as pale as paper.

"Are you married to her?" he asked.

"Am I what?"

"Married. You know–for ever. They say 'for ever' in theIndian words; it can't be broken."

"Ford, no!" Bernard couldn't help laughing.

John also laughed, but for another reason–laughed for purejoy.

"O brave new world," he repeated. "O brave new world thathas such people in it. Let's start at once."

"You have a most peculiar way of talking sometimes," saidBernard, staring at the young man in perplexed astonishment."And, anyhow, hadn't you better wait till you actually seethe new world?"

CHAPTER NINE

LENINA felt herself entitled, after this day of queernessand horror, to a complete and absolute holiday. As soon asthey got back to the rest-house, she swallowed sixhalf-gramme tablets of soma, lay down on her bed, and withinten minutes had embarked for lunar eternity. It would beeighteen hours at the least before she was in time again.

Bernard meanwhile lay pensive and wide-eyed in the dark. Itwas long after midnight before he fell asleep. Long aftermidnight; but his insomnia had not been fruitless; he had aplan.


Punctually, on the following morning, at ten o'clock, thegreen-uniformed octoroon stepped out of his helicopter.Bernard was waiting for him among the agaves.

"Miss Crowne's gone on soma-holiday," he explained. "Canhardly be back before five. Which leaves us seven hours."

He could fly to Santa Fé, do all the business he had to do,and be in Malpais again long before she woke up.

"She'll be quite safe here by herself?"

"Safe as helicopters," the octoroon assured him.

They climbed into the machine and started off at once. Atten thirty-four they landed on the roof of the Santa Fé PostOffice; at ten thirty-seven Bernard had got through to theWorld Controller's Office in Whitehall; at ten thirty-sevenhe was speaking to his fordship's fourth personal secretary;at ten forty-four he was repeating his story to the firstsecretary, and at ten forty-seven and a half it was thedeep, resonant voice of Mustapha Mond himself that soundedin his ears.

"I ventured to think," stammered Bernard, "that yourfordship might find the matter of sufficient scientificinterest …"

"Yes, I do find it of sufficient scientific interest," saidthe deep voice. "Bring these two individuals back to Londonwith you."

"Your fordship is aware that I shall need a special permit…"

"The necessary orders," said Mustapha Mond, "are being sentto the Warden of the Reservation at this moment. You willproceed at once to the Warden's Office. Good-morning, Mr.Marx."

There was silence. Bernard hung up the receiver and hurriedup to the roof.

"Warden's Office," he said to the Gamma-green octoroon.

At ten fifty-four Bernard was shaking hands with the Warden.

"Delighted, Mr. Marx, delighted." His boom was deferential."We have just received special orders …"

"I know," said Bernard, interrupting him. "I was talking tohis fordship on the phone a moment ago." His bored toneimplied that he was in the habit of talking to his fordshipevery day of the week. He dropped into a chair. "If you'llkindly take all the necessary steps as soon as possible. Assoon as possible," he emphatically repeated. He wasthoroughly enjoying himself.

At eleven three he had all the necessary papers in hispocket.


"So long," he said patronizingly to the Warden, who hadaccompanied him as far as the lift gates. "So long."

He walked across to the hotel, had a bath, a vibro-vacmassage, and an electrolytic shave, listened in to themorning's news, looked in for half an hour on the televisor,ate a leisured luncheon, and at half-past two flew back withthe octoroon to Malpais.

The young man stood outside the rest-house.

"Bernard," he called. "Bernard!" There was no answer.

Noiseless on his deerksin moccasins, he ran up the steps andtried the door. The door was locked.

They were gone! Gone! It was the most terrible thing thathad ever happened to him. She had asked him to come and seethem, and now they were gone. He sat down on the steps andcried.

Half an hour later it occurred to him to look through thewindow. The first thing he saw was a green suit-case, withthe initials L.C. painted on the lid. Joy flared up likefire within him. He picked up a stone. The smashed glasstinkled on the floor. A moment later he was inside the room.He opened the green suit-case; and all at once he wasbreathing Lenina's perfume, filling his lungs with heressential being. His heart beat wildly; for a moment he wasalmost faint. Then, bending over the precious box, hetouched, he lifted into the light, he examined. The zipperson Lenina's spare pair of viscose velveteen shorts were atfirst a puzzle, then solved, a delight. Zip, and then zip;zip, and then zip; he was enchanted. Her green slippers werethe most beautiful things he had ever seen. He unfolded apair of zippicamiknicks, blushed, put them hastily awayagain; but kissed a perfumed acetate handkerchief and wounda scarf round his neck. Opening a box, he spilt a cloud ofscented powder. His hands were floury with the stuff. Hewiped them on his chest, on his shoulders, on his bare arms.Delicious perfume! He shut his eyes; he rubbed his cheekagainst his own powdered arm. Touch of smooth skin againsthis face, scent in his nostrils of musky dust–her realpresence. "Lenina," he whispered. "Lenina!"

A noise made him start, made him guiltily turn. He crammedup his thieveries into the suit-case and shut the lid; thenlistened again, looked. Not a sign of life, not a sound. Andyet he had certainly heard something–something like a sigh,something like the creak of a board. He tiptoed to the doorand, cautiously opening it, found himself looking on to abroad landing. On the opposite side of the landing wasanother door, ajar. He stepped out, pushed, peeped.

There, on a low bed, the sheet flung back, dressed in a pairof pink one-piece zippyjamas, lay Lenina, fast asleep and sobeautiful in the midst of her curls, so touchingly childishwith her pink toes and her grave sleeping face, so trustfulin the helplessness of her limp hands and melted limbs, thatthe tears came to his eyes.


With an infinity of quite unnecessary precautions–fornothing short of a pistol shot could have called Lenina backfrom her soma-holiday before the appointed time–he enteredthe room, he knelt on the floor beside the bed. He gazed, heclasped his hands, his lips moved. "Her eyes," he murmured,

"Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice;Handlest in thy discourse O! that her hand, In whosecomparison all whites are ink Writing their own reproach; towhose soft seizure The cygnet's down is harsh …"

A fly buzzed round her; he waved it away. "Flies," heremembered,

"On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand, may seize Andsteal immortal blessing from her lips, Who, even in pure andvestal modesty, Still blush, as thinking their own kissessin."

Very slowly, with the hesitating gesture of one who reachesforward to stroke a shy and possibly rather dangerous bird,he put out his hand. It hung there trembling, within an inchof those limp fingers, on the verge of contact. Did he dare?Dare to profane with his unworthiest hand that … No, hedidn't. The bird was too dangerous. His hand dropped back.How beautiful she was! How beautiful!

Then suddenly he found himself reflecting that he had onlyto take hold of the zipper at her neck and give one long,strong pull … He shut his eyes, he shook his head with thegesture of a dog shaking its ears as it emerges from thewater. Detestable thought! He was ashamed of himself. Pureand vestal modesty …

There was a humming in the air. Another fly trying to stealimmortal blessings? A wasp? He looked, saw nothing. Thehumming grew louder and louder, localized itself as beingoutside the shuttered windows. The plane! In a panic, hescrambled to his feet and ran into the other room, vaultedthrough the open window, and hurrying along the path betweenthe tall agaves was in time to receive Bernard Marx as heclimbed out of the helicopter.

CHAPTER TEN

THE HANDS of all the four thousand electric clocks in allthe Bloomsbury Centre's four thousand rooms markedtwenty-seven minutes past two. "This hive of industry," asthe Director was fond of calling it, was in the full buzz ofwork. Every one was busy, everything in ordered motion.Under the microscopes, their long tails furiously lashing,spermatozoa were burrowing head first into eggs; and,fertilized, the eggs were expanding, dividing, or ifbokanovskified, budding and breaking up into wholepopulations of separate embryos. From the SocialPredestination Room the escalators went rumbling down into


the basement, and there, in the crimson darkness, stewinglywarm on their cushion of peritoneum and gorged withblood-surrogate and hormones, the foetuses grew and grew or,poisoned, languished into a stunted Epsilonhood. With afaint hum and rattle the moving racks crawled imperceptiblythrough the weeks and the recapitulated aeons to where, inthe Decanting Room, the newly-unbottled babes uttered theirfirst yell of horror and amazement.

The dynamos purred in the sub-basement, the lifts rushed upand down. On all the eleven floors of Nurseries it wasfeeding time. From eighteen hundred bottles eighteen hundredcarefully labelled infants were simultaneously sucking downtheir pint of pasteurized external secretion.

Above them, in ten successive layers of dormitory, thelittle boys and girls who were still young enough to need anafternoon sleep were as busy as every one else, though theydid not know it, listening unconsciously to hypnopædiclessons in hygiene and sociability, in class-consciousnessand the toddler's love-life. Above these again were theplayrooms where, the weather having turned to rain, ninehundred older children were amusing themselves with bricksand clay modelling, hunt-the-zipper, and erotic play.

Buzz, buzz! the hive was humming, busily, joyfully. Blithewas the singing of the young girls over their test-tubes,the Predestinators whistled as they worked, and in theDecanting Room what glorious jokes were cracked above theempty bottles! But the Director's face, as he entered theFertilizing Room with Henry Foster, was grave, wooden withseverity.

"A public example," he was saying. "In this room, because itcontains more high-caste workers than any other in theCentre. I have told him to meet me here at half-past two."

"He does his work very well," put in Henry, withhypocritical generosity.

"I know. But that's all the more reason for severity. Hisintellectual eminence carries with it corresponding moralresponsibilities. The greater a man's talents, the greaterhis power to lead astray. It is better that one shouldsuffer than that many should be corrupted. Consider thematter dispassionately, Mr. Foster, and you will see that nooffence is so heinous as unorthodoxy of behaviour. Murderkills only the individual–and, after all, what is anindividual?" With a sweeping gesture he indicated the rowsof microscopes, the test-tubes, the incubators. "We can makea new one with the greatest ease–as many as we like.Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mereindividual; it strikes at Society itself. Yes, at Societyitself," he repeated. "Ah, but here he comes."

Bernard had entered the room and was advancing between therows of fertilizers towards them. A veneer of jauntyself-confidence thinly concealed his nervousness. The voicein which he said, "Good-morning, Director," was absurdly tooloud; that in which, correcting his mistake, he said, "Youasked me to come and speak to you here," ridiculously soft,a squeak.


"Yes, Mr. Marx," said the Director portentously. "I did askyou to come to me here. You returned from your holiday lastnight, I understand."

"Yes," Bernard answered.

"Yes-s," repeated the Director, lingering, a serpent, on the"s." Then, suddenly raising his voice, "Ladies andgentlemen," he trumpeted, "ladies and gentlemen."

The singing of the girls over their test-tubes, thepreoccupied whistling of the Microscopists, suddenly ceased.There was a profound silence; every one looked round.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the Director repeated once more,"excuse me for thus interrupting your labours. A painfulduty constrains me. The security and stability of Societyare in danger. Yes, in danger, ladies and gentlemen. Thisman," he pointed accusingly at Bernard, "this man who standsbefore you here, this Alpha-Plus to whom so much has beengiven, and from whom, in consequence, so much must beexpected, this colleague of yours–or should I anticipate andsay this ex-colleague?–has grossly betrayed the trustimposed in him. By his heretical views on sport and soma, bythe scandalous unorthodoxy of his sex-life, by his refusalto obey the teachings of Our Ford and behave out of officehours, 'even as a little infant,'" (here the Director madethe sign of the T), "he has proved himself an enemy ofSociety, a subverter, ladies and gentlemen, of all Order andStability, a conspirator against Civilization itself. Forthis reason I propose to dismiss him, to dismiss him withignominy from the post he has held in this Centre; I proposeforthwith to apply for his transference to a Subcentre ofthe lowest order and, that his punishment may serve the bestinterest of Society, as far as possible removed from anyimportant Centre of population. In Iceland he will havesmall opportunity to lead others astray by his unfordlyexample." The Director paused; then, folding his arms, heturned impressively to Bernard. "Marx," he said, "can youshow any reason why I should not now execute the judgmentpassed upon you?"

"Yes, I can," Bernard answered in a very loud voice.

Somewhat taken aback, but still majestically, "Then showit," said the Director.

"Certainly. But it's in the passage. One moment." Bernardhurried to the door and threw it open. "Come in," hecommanded, and the reason came in and showed itself.

There was a gasp, a murmur of astonishment and horror; ayoung girl screamed; standing on a chair to get a betterview some one upset two test-tubes full of spermatozoa.Bloated, sagging, and among those firm youthful bodies,those undistorted faces, a strange and terrifying monster ofmiddle-agedness, Linda advanced into the room, coquettishlysmiling her broken and discoloured smile, and rolling as shewalked, with what was meant to be a voluptuous undulation,her enormous haunches. Bernard walked beside her.


"There he is," he said, pointing at the Director.

"Did you think I didn't recognize him?" Linda askedindignantly; then, turning to the Director, "Of course Iknew you; Tomakin, I should have known you anywhere, among athousand. But perhaps you've forgotten me. Don't youremember? Don't you remember, Tomakin? Your Linda." Shestood looking at him, her head on one side, still smiling,but with a smile that became progressively, in face of theDirector's expression of petrified disgust, less and lessself-confident, that wavered and finally went out. "Don'tyou remember, Tomakin?" she repeated in a voice thattrembled. Her eyes were anxious, agonized. The blotched andsagging face twisted grotesquely into the grimace of extremegrief. "Tomakin!" She held out her arms. Some one began totitter.

"What's the meaning," began the Director, "of this monstrous…"

"Tomakin!" She ran forward, her blanket trailing behind her,threw her arms round his neck, hid her face on his chest.

A howl of laughter went up irrepressibly.

"… this monstrous practical joke," the Director shouted.

Red in the face, he tried to disengage himself from herembrace. Desperately she clung. "But I'm Linda, I'm Linda."'The laughter drowned her voice. "You made me have a baby,"she screamed above the uproar. There was a sudden andappalling hush; eyes floated uncomfortably, not knowingwhere to look. The Director went suddenly pale, stoppedstruggling and stood, his hands on her wrists, staring downat her, horrified. "Yes, a baby–and I was its mother." Sheflung the obscenity like a challenge into the outragedsilence; then, suddenly breaking away from him, ashamed,ashamed, covered her face with her hands, sobbing. "Itwasn't my fault, Tomakin. Because I always did my drill,didn't I? Didn't I? Always … I don't know how … If you knewhow awful, Tomakin … But he was a comfort to me, all thesame." Turning towards the door, "John!" she called. "John!"

He came in at once, paused for a moment just inside thedoor, looked round, then soft on his moccasined feet strodequickly across the room, fell on his knees in front of theDirector, and said in a clear voice: "My father!"

The word (for "father" was not so much obscene as–with itsconnotation of something at one remove from theloathsomeness and moral obliquity of child-bearing–merelygross, a scatological rather than a pornographicimpropriety); the comically smutty word relieved what hadbecome a quite intolerable tension. Laughter broke out,enormous, almost hysterical, peal after peal, as though itwould never stop. My father–and it was the Director! Myfather! Oh Ford, oh Ford! That was really too good. Thewhooping and the roaring renewed themselves, faces seemed onthe point of disintegration, tears were streaming. Six moretest-tubes of spermatozoa were upset. My father!


Pale, wild-eyed, the Director glared about him in an agonyof bewildered humiliation.

My father! The laughter, which had shown signs of dyingaway, broke out again more loudly than ever. He put hishands over his ears and rushed out of the room.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

AFTER the scene in the Fertilizing Room, all upper-casteLondon was wild to see this delicious creature who hadfallen on his knees before the Director of Hatcheries andConditioning–or rather the ex-Director, for the poor man hadresigned immediately afterwards and never set foot insidethe Centre again–had flopped down and called him (the jokewas almost too good to be true!) "my father." Linda, on thecontrary, cut no ice; nobody had the smallest desire to seeLinda. To say one was a mother–that was past a joke: it wasan obscenity. Moreover, she wasn't a real savage, had beenhatched out of a bottle and conditioned like any one else:so couldn't have really quaint ideas. Finally–and this wasby far the strongest reason for people's not wanting to seepoor Linda–there was her appearance. Fat; having lost heryouth; with bad teeth, and a blotched complexion, and thatfigure (Ford!)–you simply couldn't look at her withoutfeeling sick, yes, positively sick. So the best people werequite determined not to see Linda. And Linda, for her part,had no desire to see them. The return to civilization wasfor her the return to soma, was the possibility of lying inbed and taking holiday after holiday, without ever having tocome back to a headache or a fit of vomiting, without everbeing made to feel as you always felt after peyotl, asthough you'd done something so shamefully anti-social thatyou could never hold up your head again. Soma played none ofthese unpleasant tricks. The holiday it gave was perfectand, if the morning after was disagreeable, it was so, notintrinsically, but only by comparison with the joys of theholiday. The remedy was to make the holiday continuous.Greedily she clamoured for ever larger, ever more frequentdoses. Dr. Shaw at first demurred; then let her have whatshe wanted. She took as much as twenty grammes a day.

"Which will finish her off in a month or two," the doctorconfided to Bernard. "One day the respiratory centre will beparalyzed. No more breathing. Finished. And a good thingtoo. If we could rejuvenate, of course it would bedifferent. But we can't."

Surprisingly, as every one thought (for on soma-holidayLinda was most conveniently out of the way), John raisedobjections.

"But aren't you shortening her life by giving her so much?"

"In one sense, yes," Dr. Shaw admitted. "But in anotherwe're actually lengthening it." The young man stared,uncomprehending. "Soma may make you lose a few years intime," the doctor went on. "But think of the enormous,


immeasurable durations it can give you out of time. Everysoma-holiday is a bit of what our ancestors used to calleternity."

John began to understand. "Eternity was in our lips andeyes," he murmured.

"Eh?"

"Nothing."

"Of course," Dr. Shaw went on, "you can't allow people to gopopping off into eternity if they've got any serious work todo. But as she hasn't got any serious work …"

"All the same," John persisted, "I don't believe it'sright."

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "Well, of course, if youprefer to have her screaming mad all the time …"

In the end John was forced to give in. Linda got her soma.Thenceforward she remained in her little room on thethirty-seventh floor of Bernard's apartment house, in bed,with the radio and television always on, and the patchoulitap just dripping, and the soma tablets within reach of herhand–there she remained; and yet wasn't there at all, wasall the time away, infinitely far away, on holiday; onholiday in some other world, where the music of the radiowas a labyrinth of sonorous colours, a sliding, palpitatinglabyrinth, that led (by what beautifully inevitablewindings) to a bright centre of absolute conviction; wherethe dancing images of the television box were the performersin some indescribably delicious all-singing feely; where thedripping patchouli was more than scent–was the sun, was amillion saxophones, was Popé making love, only much more so,incomparably more, and without end.

"No, we can't rejuvenate. But I'm very glad," Dr. Shaw hadconcluded, "to have had this opportunity to see an exampleof senility in a human being. Thank you so much for callingme in." He shook Bernard warmly by the hand.

It was John, then, they were all after. And as it was onlythrough Bernard, his accredited guardian, that John could beseen, Bernard now found himself, for the first time in hislife, treated not merely normally, but as a person ofoutstanding importance. There was no more talk of thealcohol in his blood-surrogate, no gibes at his personalappearance. Henry Foster went out of his way to be friendly;Benito Hoover made him a present of six packets ofsex-hormone chewing-gum; the Assistant Predestinator cameout and cadged almost abjectly for an invitation to one ofBernard's evening parties. As for the women, Bernard hadonly to hint at the possibility of an invitation, and hecould have whichever of them he liked.

"Bernard's asked me to meet the Savage next Wednesday,"Fanny announced triumphantly.


"I'm so glad," said Lenina. "And now you must admit that youwere wrong about Bernard. Don't you think he's really rathersweet?"

Fanny nodded. "And I must say," she said, "I was quiteagreeably surprised."

The Chief Bottler, the Director of Predestination, threeDeputy Assistant Fertilizer-Generals, the Professor ofFeelies in the College of Emotional Engineering, the Dean ofthe Westminster Community Singery, the Supervisor ofBokanovskification–the list of Bernard's notabilities wasinterminable.

"And I had six girls last week," he confided to HelmholtzWatson. "One on Monday, two on Tuesday, two more on Friday,and one on Saturday. And if I'd had the time or theinclination, there were at least a dozen more who were onlytoo anxious …"

Helmholtz listened to his boastings in a silence so gloomilydisapproving that Bernard was offended.

"You're envious," he said.

Helmholtz shook his head. "I'm rather sad, that's all," heanswered.

Bernard went off in a huff. Never, he told himself, neverwould he speak to Helmholtz again.

The days passed. Success went fizzily to Bernard's head, andin the process completely reconciled him (as any goodintoxicant should do) to a world which, up till then, he hadfound very unsatisfactory. In so far as it recognized him asimportant, the order of things was good. But, reconciled byhis success, he yet refused to forego the privilege ofcriticizing this order. For the act of criticizingheightened his sense of importance, made him feel larger.Moreover, he did genuinely believe that there were things tocriticize. (At the same time, he genuinely liked being asuccess and having all the girls he wanted.) Before thosewho now, for the sake of the Savage, paid their court tohim, Bernard would parade a carping unorthodoxy. He waspolitely listened to. But behind his back people shook theirheads. "That young man will come to a bad end," they said,prophesying the more confidently in that they themselveswould in due course personally see to it that the end wasbad. "He won't find another Savage to help him out a secondtime," they said. Meanwhile, however, there was the firstSavage; they were polite. And because they were polite,Bernard felt positively gigantic–gigantic and at the sametime light with elation, lighter than air.

"Lighter than air," said Bernard, pointing upwards.

Like a pearl in the sky, high, high above them, the WeatherDepartment's captive balloon shone rosily in the sunshine.

"… the said Savage," so ran Bernard's instructions, "to beshown civilized life in all its aspects. …"


He was being shown a bird's-eye view of it at present, abird's-eye view from the platform of the Charing-T Tower.The Station Master and the Resident Meteorologist wereacting as guides. But it was Bernard who did most of thetalking. Intoxicated, he was behaving as though, at the veryleast, he were a visiting World Controller. Lighter thanair.

The Bombay Green Rocket dropped out of the sky. Thepassengers alighted. Eight identical Dravidian twins inkhaki looked out of the eight portholes of the cabin–thestewards.

"Twelve hundred and fifty kilometres an hour," said theStation Master impressively. "What do you think of that, Mr.Savage?"

John thought it very nice. "Still," he said, "Ariel couldput a girdle round the earth in forty minutes."

"The Savage," wrote Bernard in his report to Mustapha Mond,"shows surprisingly little astonishment at, or awe of,civilized inventions. This is partly due, no doubt, to thefact that he has heard them talked about by the woman Linda,his m–––."

(Mustapha Mond frowned. "Does the fool think I'm toosqueamish to see the word written out at full length?")

"Partly on his interest being focussed on what he calls 'thesoul,' which he persists in regarding as an entityindependent of the physical environment, whereas, as I triedto point out to him …"

The Controller skipped the next sentences and was just aboutto turn the page in search of something more interestinglyconcrete, when his eye was caught by a series of quiteextraordinary phrases. " … though I must admit," he read,"that I agree with the Savage in finding civilizedinfantility too easy or, as he puts it, not expensiveenough; and I would like to take this opportunity of drawingyour fordship's attention to …"

Mustapha Mond's anger gave place almost at once to mirth.The idea of this creature solemnly lecturing him–him-aboutthe social order was really too grotesque. The man must havegone mad. "I ought to give him a lesson," he said tohimself; then threw back his head and laughed aloud. For themoment, at any rate, the lesson would not be given.

It was a small factory of lighting-sets for helicopters, abranch of the Electrical Equipment Corporation. They weremet on the roof itself (for that circular letter ofrecommendation from the Controller was magical in itseffects) by the Chief Technician and the Human ElementManager. They walked downstairs into the factory.

"Each process," explained the Human Element Manager, "iscarried out, so far as possible, by a single BokanovskyGroup."


And, in effect, eighty-three almost noseless blackbrachycephalic Deltas were cold-pressing. The fifty-sixfour-spindle chucking and turning machines were beingmanipulated by fifty-six aquiline and ginger Gammas. Onehundred and seven heat-conditioned Epsilon Senegalese wereworking in the foundry. Thirty-three Delta females,long-headed, sandy, with narrow pelvises, and all within 20millimetres of 1 metre 69 centimetres tall, were cuttingscrews. In the assembling room, the dynamos were being puttogether by two sets of Gamma-Plus dwarfs. The two lowwork-tables faced one another; between them crawled theconveyor with its load of separate parts; forty-seven blondeheads were confronted by forty-seven brown ones. Forty-sevensnubs by forty-seven hooks; forty-seven receding byforty-seven prognathous chins. The completed mechanisms wereinspected by eighteen identical curly auburn girls in Gammagreen, packed in crates by thirty-four short-legged,left-handed male Delta-Minuses, and loaded into the waitingtrucks and lorries by sixty-three blue-eyed, flaxen andfreckled Epsilon Semi-Morons.

"O brave new world …" By some malice of his memory theSavage found himself repeating Miranda's words. "O brave newworld that has such people in it."

"And I assure you," the Human Element Manager concluded, asthey left the factory, "we hardly ever have any trouble withour workers. We always find …"

But the Savage had suddenly broken away from his companionsand was violently retching, behind a clump of laurels, asthough the solid earth had been a helicopter in an airpocket.

"The Savage," wrote Bernard, "refuses to take soma, andseems much distressed because of the woman Linda, his m–––,remains permanently on holiday. It is worthy of note that,in spite of his m–––'s senility and the extremerepulsiveness of her appearance, the Savage frequently goesto see her and appears to be much attached to her–aninteresting example of the way in which early conditioningcan be made to modify and even run counter to naturalimpulses (in this case, the impulse to recoil from anunpleasant object)."

At Eton they alighted on the roof of Upper School. On theopposite side of School Yard, the fifty-two stories ofLupton's Tower gleamed white in the sunshine. College ontheir left and, on their right, the School Community Singeryreared their venerable piles of ferro-concrete andvita-glass. In the centre of the quadrangle stood the quaintold chrome-steel statue of Our Ford.

Dr. Gaffney, the Provost, and Miss Keate, the Head Mistress,received them as they stepped out of the plane.

"Do you have many twins here?" the Savage asked ratherapprehensively, as they set out on their tour of inspection.


"Oh, no," the Provost answered. "Eton is reservedexclusively for upper-caste boys and girls. One egg, oneadult. It makes education more difficult of course. But asthey'll be called upon to take responsibilities and dealwith unexpected emergencies, it can't be helped." He sighed.

Bernard, meanwhile, had taken a strong fancy to Miss Keate."If you're free any Monday, Wednesday, or Friday evening,"he was saying. Jerking his thumb towards the Savage, "He'scurious, you know," Bernard added. "Quaint."

Miss Keate smiled (and her smile was really charming, hethought); said Thank you; would be delighted to come to oneof his parties. The Provost opened a door.

Five minutes in that Alpha Double Plus classroom left John atrifle bewildered.

"What is elementary relativity?" he whispered to Bernard.Bernard tried to explain, then thought better of it andsuggested that they should go to some other classroom.

From behind a door in the corridor leading to the Beta-Minusgeography room, a ringing soprano voice called, "One, two,three, four," and then, with a weary impatience, "As youwere."

"Malthusian Drill," explained the Head Mistress. "Most ofour girls are freemartins, of course. I'm a freemartinmyself." She smiled at Bernard. "But we have about eighthundred unsterilized ones who need constant drilling."

In the Beta-Minus geography room John learnt that "a savagereservation is a place which, owing to unfavourable climaticor geological conditions, or poverty of natural resources,has not been worth the expense of civilizing." A click; theroom was darkened; and suddenly, on the screen above theMaster's head, there were the Penitentes of Acomaprostrating themselves before Our Lady, and wailing as Johnhad heard them wail, confessing their sins before Jesus onthe Cross, before the eagle image of Pookong. The youngEtonians fairly shouted with laughter. Still wailing, thePenitentes rose to their feet, stripped off their uppergarments and, with knotted whips, began to beat themselves,blow after blow. Redoubled, the laughter drowned even theamplified record of their groans.

"But why do they laugh?" asked the Savage in a painedbewilderment.

"Why?" The Provost turned towards him a still broadlygrinning face. "Why? But because it's so extraordinarilyfunny."

In the cinematographic twilight, Bernard risked a gesturewhich, in the past, even total darkness would hardly haveemboldened him to make. Strong in his new importance, he puthis arm around the Head Mistress's waist. It yielded,


willowily. He was just about to snatch a kiss or two andperhaps a gentle pinch, when the shutters clicked openagain.

"Perhaps we had better go on," said Miss Keate, and movedtowards the door.

"And this," said the Provost a moment later, "is HypnopædicControl Room."

Hundreds of synthetic music boxes, one for each dormitory,stood ranged in shelves round three sides of the room;pigeon-holed on the fourth were the paper sound-track rollson which the various hypnopædic lessons were printed.

"You slip the roll in here," explained Bernard, interruptingDr. Gaffney, "press down this switch …"

"No, that one," corrected the Provost, annoyed.

"That one, then. The roll unwinds. The selenium cellstransform the light impulses into sound waves, and …"

"And there you are," Dr. Gaffney concluded.

"Do they read Shakespeare?" asked the Savage as they walked,on their way to the Bio-chemical Laboratories, past theSchool Library.

"Certainly not," said the Head Mistress, blushing.

"Our library," said Dr. Gaffney, "contains only books ofreference. If our young people need distraction, they canget it at the feelies. We don't encourage them to indulge inany solitary amusements."

Five bus-loads of boys and girls, singing or in a silentembracement, rolled past them over the vitrified highway.

"Just returned," explained Dr. Gaffney, while Bernard,whispering, made an appointment with the Head Mistress forthat very evening, "from the Slough Crematorium. Deathconditioning begins at eighteen months. Every tot spends twomornings a week in a Hospital for the Dying. All the besttoys are kept there, and they get chocolate cream on deathdays. They learn to take dying as a matter of course."

"Like any other physiological process," put in the HeadMistress professionally.

Eight o'clock at the Savoy. It was all arranged.

On their way back to London they stopped at the TelevisionCorporation's factory at Brentford.

"Do you mind waiting here a moment while I go andtelephone?" asked Bernard.

The Savage waited and watched. The Main Day-Shift was justgoing off duty. Crowds of lower-caste workers were queued upin front of the monorail station-seven or eight hundred


Gamma, Delta and Epsilon men and women, with not more than adozen faces and statures between them. To each of them, withhis or her ticket, the booking clerk pushed over a littlecardboard pillbox. The long caterpillar of men and womenmoved slowly forward.

"What's in those" (remembering The Merchant of Venice)"those caskets?" the Savage enquired when Bernard hadrejoined him.

"The day's soma ration," Bernard answered ratherindistinctly; for he was masticating a piece of BenitoHoover's chewing-gum. "They get it after their work's over.Four half-gramme tablets. Six on Saturdays."

He took John's arm affectionately and they walked backtowards the helicopter.

Lenina came singing into the Changing Room.

"You seem very pleased with yourself," said Fanny.

"I am pleased," she answered. Zip! "Bernard rang up half anhour ago." Zip, zip! She stepped out of her shorts. "He hasan unexpected engagement." Zip! "Asked me if I'd take theSavage to the feelies this evening. I must fly." She hurriedaway towards the bathroom.

"She's a lucky girl," Fanny said to herself as she watchedLenina go.

There was no envy in the comment; good-natured Fanny wasmerely stating a fact. Lenina was lucky; lucky in havingshared with Bernard a generous portion of the Savage'simmense celebrity, lucky in reflecting from herinsignificant person the moment's supremely fashionableglory. Had not the Secretary of the Young Women's FordianAssociation asked her to give a lecture about herexperiences? Had she not been invited to the Annual Dinnerof the Aphroditeum Club? Had she not already appeared in theFeelytone News–visibly, audibly and tactually appeared tocountless millions all over the planet?

Hardly less flattering had been the attentions paid her byconspicuous individuals. The Resident World Controller'sSecond Secretary had asked her to dinner and breakfast. Shehad spent one week-end with the Ford Chief-Justice, andanother with the Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury. ThePresident of the Internal and External SecretionsCorporation was perpetually on the phone, and she had beento Deauville with the Deputy-Governor of the Bank of Europe.

"It's wonderful, of course. And yet in a way," she hadconfessed to Fanny, "I feel as though I were gettingsomething on false pretences. Because, of course, the firstthing they all want to know is what it's like to make loveto a Savage. And I have to say I don't know." She shook herhead. "Most of the men don't believe me, of course. But it's


true. I wish it weren't," she added sadly and sighed. "He'sterribly good-looking; don't you think so?"

"But doesn't he like you?" asked Fanny.

"Sometimes I think he does and sometimes I think he doesn't.He always does his best to avoid me; goes out of the roomwhen I come in; won't touch me; won't even look at me. Butsometimes if I turn round suddenly, I catch him staring; andthen–well, you know how men look when they like you."

Yes, Fanny knew.

"I can't make it out," said Lenina.

She couldn't make it out; and not only was bewildered; wasalso rather upset.

"Because, you see, Fanny, I like him."

Liked him more and more. Well, now there'd be a real chance,she thought, as she scented herself after her bath. Dab,dab, dab–a real chance. Her high spirits overflowed in asong.

''Hug me till you drug me, honey; Kiss me till I'm in acoma; Hug me, honey, snuggly bunny; Love's as good as soma."

The scent organ was playing a delightfully refreshing HerbalCapriccio–rippling arpeggios of thyme and lavender, ofrosemary, basil, myrtle, tarragon; a series of daringmodulations through the spice keys into ambergris; and aslow return through sandalwood, camphor, cedar and newmownhay (with occasional subtle touches of discord–a whiff ofkidney pudding, the faintest suspicion of pig's dung) backto the simple aromatics with which the piece began. Thefinal blast of thyme died away; there was a round ofapplause; the lights went up. In the synthetic music machinethe sound-track roll began to unwind. It was a trio forhyper-violin, super-cello and oboe-surrogate that now filledthe air with its agreeable languor. Thirty or forty bars–andthen, against this instrumental background, a much more thanhuman voice began to warble; now throaty, now from the head,now hollow as a flute, now charged with yearning harmonics,it effortlessly passed from Gaspard's Forster's low recordon the very frontiers of musical tone to a trilled bat-notehigh above the highest C to which (in 1770, at the Ducalopera of Parma, and to the astonishment of Mozart) LucreziaAjugari, alone of all the singers in history, oncepiercingly gave utterance.

Sunk in their pneumatic stalls, Lenina and the Savagesniffed and listened. It was now the turn also for eyes andskin.

The house lights went down; fiery letters stood out solidand as though self-supported in the darkness. THREE WEEKS INA HELICOPTER . AN ALL-SUPER-SINGING, SYNTHETIC-TALK1NG,COLOURED, STEREOSCOPIC FEELY. WITH SYNCHRONIZED SCENT-ORGANACCOMPANIMENT.


"Take hold of those metal knobs on the arms of your chair,"whispered Lenina. "Otherwise you won't get any of the feelyeffects."

The Savage did as he was told.

Those fiery letters, meanwhile, had disappeared; there wereten seconds of complete darkness; then suddenly, dazzlingand incomparably more solid-looking than they would haveseemed in actual flesh and blood, far more real thanreality, there stood the stereoscopic images, locked in oneanother's arms, of a gigantic negro and a golden-hairedyoung brachycephalic Beta-Plus female.

The Savage started. That sensation on his lips! He lifted ahand to his mouth; the titillation ceased; let his hand fallback on the metal knob; it began again. The scent organ,meanwhile, breathed pure musk. Expiringly, a sound-tracksuper-dove cooed "Oo-ooh"; and vibrating only thirty-twotimes a second, a deeper than African bass made answer:"Aa-aah." "Ooh-ah! Ooh-ah!" the stereoscopic lips cametogether again, and once more the facial erogenous zones ofthe six thousand spectators in the Alhambra tingled withalmost intolerable galvanic pleasure. "Ooh …"

The plot of the film was extremely simple. A few minutesafter the first Oohs and Aahs (a duet having been sung and alittle love made on that famous bearskin, every hair ofwhich–the Assistant Predestinator was perfectly right–couldbe separately and distinctly felt), the negro had ahelicopter accident, fell on his head. Thump! what a twingethrough the forehead! A chorus of ow's and aie's went upfrom the audience.

The concussion knocked all the negro's conditioning into acocked hat. He developed for the Beta blonde an exclusiveand maniacal passion. She protested. He persisted. Therewere struggles, pursuits, an assault on a rival, finally asensational kidnapping. The Beta blond was ravished awayinto the sky and kept there, hovering, for three weeks in awildly anti-social tête-à-tête with the black madman.Finally, after a whole series of adventures and much aerialacrobacy three handsome young Alphas succeeded in rescuingher. The negro was packed off to an Adult Re-conditioningCentre and the film ended happily and decorously, with theBeta blonde becoming the mistress of all her three rescuers.They interrupted themselves for a moment to sing a syntheticquartet, with full super-orchestral accompaniment andgardenias on the scent organ. Then the bearskin made a finalappearance and, amid a blare of saxophones, the laststereoscopic kiss faded into darkness, the last electrictitillation died on the lips like a dying moth that quivers,quivers, ever more feebly, ever more faintly, and at last isquiet, quite still.

But for Lenina the moth did not completely die. Even afterthe lights had gone up, while they were shuffling slowlyalong with the crowd towards the lifts, its ghost stillfluttered against her lips, still traced fine shuddering


roads of anxiety and pleasure across her skin. Her cheekswere flushed. She caught hold of the Savage's arm andpressed it, limp, against her side. He looked down at herfor a moment, pale, pained, desiring, and ashamed of hisdesire. He was not worthy, not … Their eyes for a momentmet. What treasures hers promised! A queen's ransom oftemperament. Hastily he looked away, disengaged hisimprisoned arm. He was obscurely terrified lest she shouldcease to be something he could feel himself unworthy of.

"I don't think you ought to see things like that," he said,making haste to transfer from Lenina herself to thesurrounding circumstances the blame for any past or possiblefuture lapse from perfection.

"Things like what, John?"

"Like this horrible film."

"Horrible?" Lenina was genuinely astonished. "But I thoughtit was lovely."

"It was base," he said indignantly, "it was ignoble."

She shook her head. "I don't know what you mean." Why was heso queer? Why did he go out of his way to spoil things?

In the taxicopter he hardly even looked at her. Bound bystrong vows that had never been pronounced, obedient to lawsthat had long since ceased to run, he sat averted and insilence. Sometimes, as though a finger had plucked at sometaut, almost breaking string, his whole body would shakewith a sudden nervous start.

The taxicopter landed on the roof of Lenina's apartmenthouse. "At last," she thought exultantly as she stepped outof the cab. At last–even though he had been so queer justnow. Standing under a lamp, she peered into her hand mirror.At last. Yes, her nose was a bit shiny. She shook the loosepowder from her puff. While he was paying off the taxi–therewould just be time. She rubbed at the shininess, thinking:"He's terribly good-looking. No need for him to be shy likeBernard. And yet … Any other man would have done it longago. Well, now at last." That fragment of a face in thelittle round mirror suddenly smiled at her.

"Good-night," said a strangled voice behind her. Leninawheeled round. He was standing in the doorway of the cab,his eyes fixed, staring; had evidently been staring all thistime while she was powdering her nose, waiting–but what for?or hesitating, trying to make up his mind, and all the timethinking, thinking–she could not imagine what extraordinarythoughts. "Good-night, Lenina," he repeated, and made astrange grimacing attempt to smile.

"But, John … I thought you were … I mean, aren't you? …"

He shut the door and bent forward to say something to thedriver. The cab shot up into the air.

Looking down through the window in the floor, the Savage


could see Lenina's upturned face, pale in the bluish lightof the lamps. The mouth was open, she was calling. Herforeshortened figure rushed away from him; the diminishingsquare of the roof seemed to be falling through thedarkness.

Five minutes later he was back in his room. From itshiding-place he took out his mouse-nibbled volume, turnedwith religious care its stained and crumbled pages, andbegan to read Othello. Othello, he remembered, was like thehero of Three Weeks in a Helicopter–a black man.

Drying her eyes, Lenina walked across the roof to the lift.On her way down to the twenty-seventh floor she pulled outher soma bottle. One gramme, she decided, would not beenough; hers had been more than a one-gramme affliction. Butif she took two grammes, she ran the risk of not waking upin time to-morrow morning. She compromised and, into hercupped left palm, shook out three half-gramme tablets.

CHAPTER TWELVE

BERNARD had to shout through the locked door; the Savagewould not open.

"But everybody's there, waiting for you."

"Let them wait," came back the muffled voice through thedoor.

"But you know quite well, John" (how difficult it is tosound persuasive at the top of one's voice!) "I asked themon purpose to meet you."

"You ought to have asked me first whether I wanted to meetthem."

"But you always came before, John."

"That's precisely why I don't want to come again."

"Just to please me," Bernard bellowingly wheedled. "Won'tyou come to please me?"

"No."

"Do you seriously mean it?"

"Yes."

Despairingly, "But what shall I do?" Bernard wailed.

"Go to hell!" bawled the exasperated voice from within.

"But the Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury is thereto-night." Bernard was almost in tears.

"Ai yaa tákwa!" It was only in Zuñi that the Savage could


adequately express what he felt about theArch-Community-Songster. "Háni!" he added as anafter-thought; and then (with what derisive ferocity!):"Sons éso tse-ná." And he spat on the ground, as Popé mighthave done.

In the end Bernard had to slink back, diminished, to hisrooms and inform the impatient assembly that the Savagewould not be appearing that evening. The news was receivedwith indignation. The men were furious at having beentricked into behaving politely to this insignificant fellowwith the unsavoury reputation and the heretical opinions.The higher their position in the hierarchy, the deeper theirresentment.

"To play such a joke on me," the Arch-Songster keptrepeating, "on me!"

As for the women, they indignantly felt that they had beenhad on false pretences–had by a wretched little man who hadhad alcohol poured into his bottle by mistake–by a creaturewith a Gamma-Minus physique. It was an outrage, and theysaid so, more and more loudly. The Head Mistress of Eton wasparticularly scathing.

Lenina alone said nothing. Pale, her blue eyes clouded withan unwonted melancholy, she sat in a corner, cut off fromthose who surrounded her by an emotion which they did notshare. She had come to the party filled with a strangefeeling of anxious exultation. "In a few minutes," she hadsaid to herself, as she entered the room, "I shall be seeinghim, talking to him, telling him" (for she had come with hermind made up) "that I like him–more than anybody I've everknown. And then perhaps he'll say …"

What would he say? The blood had rushed to her cheeks.

"Why was he so strange the other night, after the feelies?So queer. And yet I'm absolutely sure he really does ratherlike me. I'm sure …"

It was at this moment that Bernard had made hisannouncement; the Savage wasn't coming to the party.

Lenina suddenly felt all the sensations normally experiencedat the beginning of a Violent Passion Surrogate treatment–asense of dreadful emptiness, a breathless apprehension, anausea. Her heart seemed to stop beating.

"Perhaps it's because he doesn't like me," she said toherself. And at once this possibility became an establishedcertainty: John had refused to come because he didn't likeher. He didn't like her. …

"It really is a bit too thick," the Head Mistress of Etonwas saying to the Director of Crematoria and PhosphorusReclamation. "When I think that I actually …"

"Yes," came the voice of Fanny Crowne, "it's absolutely true


about the alcohol. Some one I know knew some one who wasworking in the Embryo Store at the time. She said to myfriend, and my friend said to me …"

"Too bad, too bad," said Henry Foster, sympathizing with theArch-Community-Songster. "It may interest you to know thatour ex-Director was on the point of transferring him toIceland."

Pierced by every word that was spoken, the tight balloon ofBernard's happy self-confidence was leaking from a thousandwounds. Pale, distraught, abject and agitated, he movedamong his guests, stammering incoherent apologies, assuringthem that next time the Savage would certainly be there,begging them to sit down and take a carotene sandwich, aslice of vitamin A pâté, a glass of champagne-surrogate.They duly ate, but ignored him; drank and were either rudeto his face or talked to one another about him, loudly andoffensively, as though he had not been there.

"And now, my friends," said the Arch-Community-Songster ofCanterbury, in that beautiful ringing voice with which heled the proceedings at Ford's Day Celebrations, "Now, myfriends, I think perhaps the time has come …" He rose, putdown his glass, brushed from his purple viscose waistcoatthe crumbs of a considerable collation, and walked towardsthe door.

Bernard darted forward to intercept him.

"Must you really, Arch-Songster? … It's very early still.I'd hoped you would …"

Yes, what hadn't he hoped, when Lenina confidentially toldhim that the Arch-Community-Songster would accept aninvitation if it were sent. "He's really rather sweet, youknow." And she had shown Bernard the little goldenzipper-fastening in the form of a T which the Arch-Songsterhad given her as a memento of the week-end she had spent atLambeth. To meet the Arch-Community-Songster of Canterburyand Mr. Savage. Bernard had proclaimed his triumph on everyinvitation card. But the Savage had chosen this evening ofall evenings to lock himself up in his room, to shout"Háni!" and even (it was lucky that Bernard didn'tunderstand Zuñi) "Sons éso tse-ná!" What should have beenthe crowning moment of Bernard's whole career had turned outto be the moment of his greatest humiliation.

"I'd so much hoped …" he stammeringly repeated, looking upat the great dignitary with pleading and distracted eyes.

"My young friend," said the Arch-Community-Songster in atone of loud and solemn severity; there was a generalsilence. "Let me give you a word of advice." He wagged hisfinger at Bernard. "Before it's too late. A word of goodadvice." (His voice became sepulchral.) "Mend your ways, myyoung friend, mend your ways." He made the sign of the Tover him and turned away. "Lenina, my dear," he called inanother tone. "Come with me."


Obediently, but unsmiling and (wholly insensible of thehonour done to her) without elation, Lenina walked afterhim, out of the room. The other guests followed at arespectful interval. The last of them slammed the door.Bernard was all alone.

Punctured, utterly deflated, he dropped into a chair and,covering his face with his hands, began to weep. A fewminutes later, however, he thought better of it and tookfour tablets of soma.

Upstairs in his room the Savage was reading Romeo andJuliet.

Lenina and the Arch-Community-Songster stepped out on to theroof of Lambeth Palace. "Hurry up, my young friend–I mean,Lenina," called the Arch-Songster impatiently from the liftgates. Lenina, who had lingered for a moment to look at themoon, dropped her eyes and came hurrying across the roof torejoin him.

"A New Theory of Biology" was the title of the paper whichMustapha Mond had just finished reading. He sat for sometime, meditatively frowning, then picked up his pen andwrote across the title-page: "The author's mathematicaltreatment of the conception of purpose is novel and highlyingenious, but heretical and, so far as the present socialorder is concerned, dangerous and potentially subversive.Not to be published." He underlined the words. "The authorwill be kept under supervision. His transference to theMarine Biological Station of St. Helena may becomenecessary." A pity, he thought, as he signed his name. Itwas a masterly piece of work. But once you began admittingexplanations in terms of purpose–well, you didn't know whatthe result might be. It was the sort of idea that mighteasily decondition the more unsettled minds among the highercastes–make them lose their faith in happiness as theSovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goalwas somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present humansphere, that the purpose of life was not the maintenance ofwell-being, but some intensification and refining ofconsciousness, some enlargement of knowledge. Which was, theController reflected, quite possibly true. But not, in thepresent circumstance, admissible. He picked up his penagain, and under the words "Not to be published" drew asecond line, thicker and blacker than the first; thensighed, "What fun it would be," he thought, "if one didn'thave to think about happiness!"

With closed eyes, his face shining with rapture, John wassoftly declaiming to vacancy:

"Oh! she doth teach the torches to burn bright.It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night,Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear;


Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear …"

The golden T lay shining on Lenina's bosom. Sportively, theArch-Community-Songster caught hold of it, sportively hepulled, pulled. "I think," said Lenina suddenly, breaking along silence, "I'd better take a couple of grammes of soma."

Bernard, by this time, was fast asleep and smiling at theprivate paradise of his dreams. Smiling, smiling. Butinexorably, every thirty seconds, the minute hand of theelectric clock above his bed jumped forward with an almostimperceptible click. Click, click, click, click … And it wasmorning. Bernard was back among the miseries of space andtime. It was in the lowest spirits that he taxied across tohis work at the Conditioning Centre. The intoxication ofsuccess had evaporated; he was soberly his old self; and bycontrast with the temporary balloon of these last weeks, theold self seemed unprecedentedly heavier than the surroundingatmosphere.

To this deflated Bernard the Savage showed himselfunexpectedly sympathetic.

"You're more like what you were at Malpais," he said, whenBernard had told him his plaintive story. "Do you rememberwhen we first talked together? Outside the little house.You're like what you were then."

"Because I'm unhappy again; that's why."

"Well, I'd rather be unhappy than have the sort of false,lying happiness you were having here."

"I like that," said Bernard bitterly. "When it's you whowere the cause of it all. Refusing to come to my party andso turning them all against me!" He knew that what he wassaying was absurd in its injustice; he admitted inwardly,and at last even aloud, the truth of all that the Savage nowsaid about the worthlessness of friends who could be turnedupon so slight a provocation into persecuting enemies. Butin spite of this knowledge and these admissions, in spite ofthe fact that his friend's support and sympathy were now hisonly comfort, Bernard continued perversely to nourish, alongwith his quite genuine affection, a secret grievance againstthe Savage, to mediate a campaign of small revenges to bewreaked upon him. Nourishing a grievance against theArch-Community-Songster was useless; there was nopossibility of being revenged on the Chief Bottler or theAssistant Predestinator. As a victim, the Savage possessed,for Bernard, this enormous superiority over the others: thathe was accessible. One of the principal functions of afriend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) thepunishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflictupon our enemies.

Bernard's other victim-friend was Helmholtz. When,discomfited, he came and asked once more for the friendshipwhich, in his prosperity, he had not thought it worth hiswhile to preserve. Helmholtz gave it; and gave it without a


reproach, without a comment, as though he had forgotten thatthere had ever been a quarrel. Touched, Bernard felt himselfat the same time humiliated by this magnanimity–amagnanimity the more extraordinary and therefore the morehumiliating in that it owed nothing to soma and everythingto Helmholtz's character. It was the Helmholtz of daily lifewho forgot and forgave, not the Helmholtz of a half-grammeholiday. Bernard was duly grateful (it was an enormouscomfort to have his friend again) and also duly resentful(it would be pleasure to take some revenge on Helmholtz forhis generosity).

At their first meeting after the estrangement, Bernardpoured out the tale of his miseries and acceptedconsolation. It was not till some days later that helearned, to his surprise and with a twinge of shame, that hewas not the only one who had been in trouble. Helmholtz hadalso come into conflict with Authority.

"It was over some rhymes," he explained. "I was giving myusual course of Advanced Emotional Engineering for ThirdYear Students. Twelve lectures, of which the seventh isabout rhymes. 'On the Use of Rhymes in Moral Propaganda andAdvertisement,' to be precise. I always illustrate mylecture with a lot of technical examples. This time Ithought I'd give them one I'd just written myself. Puremadness, of course; but I couldn't resist it." He laughed."I was curious to see what their reactions would be.Besides," he added more gravely, "I wanted to do a bit ofpropaganda; I was trying to engineer them into feeling asI'd felt when I wrote the rhymes. Ford!" He laughed again."What an outcry there was! The Principal had me up andthreatened to hand me the immediate sack. l'm a marked man."

"But what were your rhymes?" Bernard asked.

"They were about being alone."

Bernard's eyebrows went up.

"I'll recite them to you, if you like." And Helmholtz began:

"Yesterday's committee,Sticks, but a broken drum,Midnight in the City,Flutes in a vacuum,Shut lips, sleeping faces,Every stopped machine,The dumb and littered placesWhere crowds have been: …All silences rejoice,Weep (loudly or low),Speak–but with the voiceOf whom, I do not know.Absence, say, of Susan's,Absence of Egeria'sArms and respective bosoms,Lips and, ah, posteriors,Slowly form a presence;Whose? and, I ask, of whatSo absurd an essence,


That something, which is not,Nevertheless should populateEmpty night more solidlyThan that with which we copulate,Why should it seem so squalidly?

Well, I gave them that as an example, and they reported meto the Principal."

"I'm not surprised," said Bernard. "It's flatly against alltheir sleep-teaching. Remember, they've had at least aquarter of a million warnings against solitude."

"I know. But I thought I'd like to see what the effect wouldbe."

"Well, you've seen now."

Helmholtz only laughed. "I feel," he said, after a silence,as though I were just beginning to have something to writeabout. As though I were beginning to be able to use thatpower I feel I've got inside me–that extra, latent power.Something seems to be coming to me." In spite of all histroubles, he seemed, Bernard thought, profoundly happy.

Helmholtz and the Savage took to one another at once. Socordially indeed that Bernard felt a sharp pang of jealousy.In all these weeks he had never come to so close an intimacywith the Savage as Helmholtz immediately achieved. Watchingthem, listening to their talk, he found himself sometimesresentfully wishing that he had never brought them together.He was ashamed of his jealousy and alternately made effortsof will and took soma to keep himself from feeling it. Butthe efforts were not very successful; and between thesoma-holidays there were, of necessity, intervals. Theodious sentiment kept on returning.

At his third meeting with the Savage, Helmholtz recited hisrhymes on Solitude.

"What do you think of them?" he asked when he had done.

The Savage shook his head. "Listen to this," was his answer;and unlocking the drawer in which he kept his mouse-eatenbook, he opened and read:

"Let the bird of loudest layOn the sole Arabian tree,Herald sad and trumpet be …"

Helmholtz listened with a growing excitement. At "soleArabian tree" he started; at "thou shrieking harbinger" hesmiled with sudden pleasure; at "every fowl of tyrant wing"the blood rushed up into his cheeks; but at "defunctivemusic" he turned pale and trembled with an unprecedentedemotion. The Savage read on:

"Property was thus appall'd,That the self was not the same;


Single nature's double nameNeither two nor one was call'dReason in itself confoundedSaw division grow together …"

"Orgy-porgy!" said Bernard, interrupting the reading with aloud, unpleasant laugh. "It's just a Solidarity Servicehymn." He was revenging himself on his two friends forliking one another more than they liked him.

In the course of their next two or three meetings hefrequently repeated this little act of vengeance. It wassimple and, since both Helmholtz and the Savage weredreadfully pained by the shattering and defilement of afavourite poetic crystal, extremely effective. In the end,Helmholtz threatened to kick him out of the room if he daredto interrupt again. And yet, strangely enough, the nextinterruption, the most disgraceful of all, came fromHelmholtz himself.

The Savage was reading Romeo and Juliet aloud–reading (forall the time he was seeing himself as Romeo and Lenina asJuliet) with an intense and quivering passion. Helmholtz hadlistened to the scene of the lovers' first meeting with apuzzled interest. The scene in the orchard had delighted himwith its poetry; but the sentiments expressed had made himsmile. Getting into such a state about having a girl–itseemed rather ridiculous. But, taken detail by verbaldetail, what a superb piece of emotional engineering! "Thatold fellow," he said, "he makes our best propagandatechnicians look absolutely silly." The Savage smiledtriumphantly and resumed his reading. All went tolerablywell until, in the last scene of the third act, Capulet andLady Capulet began to bully Juliet to marry Paris. Helmholtzhad been restless throughout the entire scene; but when,pathetically mimed by the Savage, Juliet cried out:

"Is there no pity sitting in the clouds,That sees into the bottom of my grief?O sweet my mother, cast me not away:Delay this marriage for a month, a week;Or, if you do not, make the bridal bedIn that dim monument where Tybalt lies …"

when Juliet said this, Helmholtz broke out in an explosionof uncontrollable guffawing.

The mother and father (grotesque obscenity) forcing thedaughter to have some one she didn't want! And the idioticgirl not saying that she was having some one else whom (forthe moment, at any rate) she preferred! In its smuttyabsurdity the situation was irresistibly comical. He hadmanaged, with a heroic effort, to hold down the mountingpressure of his hilarity; but "sweet mother" (in theSavage's tremulous tone of anguish) and the reference toTybalt lying dead, but evidently uncremated and wasting hisphosphorus on a dim monument, were too much for him. Helaughed and laughed till the tears streamed down hisface–quenchlessly laughed while, pale with a sense of


outrage, the Savage looked at him over the top of his bookand then, as the laughter still continued, closed itindignantly, got up and, with the gesture of one who removeshis pearl from before swine, locked it away in its drawer.

"And yet," said Helmholtz when, having recovered breathenough to apologize, he had mollified the Savage intolistening to his explanations, "I know quite well that oneneeds ridiculous, mad situations like that; one can't writereally well about anything else. Why was that old fellowsuch a marvellous propaganda technician? Because he had somany insane, excruciating things to get excited about.You've got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can't thinkof the really good, penetrating, X-rayish phrases. Butfathers and mothers!" He shook his head. "You can't expectme to keep a straight face about fathers and mothers. Andwho's going to get excited about a boy having a girl or nothaving her?" (The Savage winced; but Helmholtz, who wasstaring pensively at the floor, saw nothing.) "No." heconcluded, with a sigh, "it won't do. We need some otherkind of madness and violence. But what? What? Where can onefind it?" He was silent; then, shaking his head, "I don'tknow," he said at last, "I don't know."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

HENRY FOSTER loomed up through the twilight of the EmbryoStore.

"Like to come to a feely this evening?"

Lenina shook her head without speaking.

"Going out with some one else?" It interested him to knowwhich of his friends was being had by which other. "Is itBenito?" he questioned.

She shook her head again.

Henry detected the weariness in those purple eyes, thepallor beneath that glaze of lupus, the sadness at thecorners of the unsmiling crimson mouth. "You're not feelingill, are you?" he asked, a trifle anxiously, afraid that shemight be suffering from one of the few remaining infectiousdiseases.

Yet once more Lenina shook her head.

"Anyhow, you ought to go and see the doctor," said Henry. "Adoctor a day keeps the jim-jams away," he added heartily,driving home his hypnopædic adage with a clap on theshoulder. "Perhaps you need a Pregnancy Substitute," hesuggested. "Or else an extra-strong V.P.S. treatment.Sometimes, you know, the standard passion surrogate isn'tquite …"

"Oh, for Ford's sake," said Lenina, breaking her stubbornsilence, "shut up!" And she turned back to her neglectedembryos.


A V.P.S. treatment indeed! She would have laughed, if shehadn't been on the point of crying. As though she hadn't gotenough V. P. of her own! She sighed profoundly as sherefilled her syringe. "John," she murmured to herself, "John…" Then "My Ford," she wondered, "have I given this one itssleeping sickness injection, or haven't I?" She simplycouldn't remember. In the end, she decided not to run therisk of letting it have a second dose, and moved down theline to the next bottle.

Twenty-two years, eight months, and four days from thatmoment, a promising young Alpha-Minus administrator atMwanza-Mwanza was to die of trypanosomiasis–the first casefor over half a century. Sighing, Lenina went on with herwork.

An hour later, in the Changing Room, Fanny was energeticallyprotesting. "But it's absurd to let yourself get into astate like this. Simply absurd," she repeated. "And whatabout? A man–one man."

"But he's the one I want."

"As though there weren't millions of other men in theworld."

"But I don't want them."

"How can you know till you've tried?"

"I have tried."

"But how many?" asked Fanny, shrugging her shoulderscontemptuously. "One, two?"

"Dozens. But," shaking her head, "it wasn't any good," sheadded.

"Well, you must persevere," said Fanny sententiously. But itwas obvious that her confidence in her own prescriptions hadbeen shaken. "Nothing can be achieved without perseverance."

"But meanwhile …"

"Don't think of him."

"I can't help it."

"Take soma, then."

"I do."

"Well, go on."

"But in the intervals I still like him. I shall always likehim."

"Well, if that's the case," said Fanny, with decision, "whydon't you just go and take him. Whether he wants it or no."


"But if you knew how terribly queer he was!"

"All the more reason for taking a firm line."

"It's all very well to say that."

"Don't stand any nonsense. Act." Fanny's voice was atrumpet; she might have been a Y.W.F.A. lecturer giving anevening talk to adolescent Beta-Minuses. "Yes, act–at once.Do it now."

"I'd be scared," said Lenina

"Well, you've only got to take half a gramme of soma first.And now I'm going to have my bath." She marched off,trailing her towel.

The bell rang, and the Savage, who was impatiently hopingthat Helmholtz would come that afternoon (for having at lastmade up his mind to talk to Helmholtz about Lenina, he couldnot bear to postpone his confidences a moment longer),jumped up and ran to the door.

"I had a premonition it was you, Helmholtz," he shouted ashe opened.

On the threshold, in a white acetate-satin sailor suit, andwith a round white cap rakishly tilted over her left ear,stood Lenina.

"Oh!" said the Savage, as though some one had struck him aheavy blow.

Half a gramme had been enough to make Lenina forget herfears and her embarrassments. "Hullo, John," she said,smiling, and walked past him into the room. Automatically heclosed the door and followed her. Lenina sat down. There wasa long silence.

"You don't seem very glad to see me, John," she said atlast.

"Not glad?" The Savage looked at her reproachfully; thensuddenly fell on his knees before her and, taking Lenina'shand, reverently kissed it. "Not glad? Oh, if you onlyknew," he whispered and, venturing to raise his eyes to herface, "Admired Lenina," he went on, "indeed the top ofadmiration, worth what's dearest in the world." She smiledat him with a luscious tenderness. "Oh, you so perfect" (shewas leaning towards him with parted lips), "so perfect andso peerless are created" (nearer and nearer) "of everycreature's best." Still nearer. The Savage suddenlyscrambled to his feet. "That's why," he said speaking withaverted face, "I wanted to do something first … I mean, toshow I was worthy of you. Not that I could ever really bethat. But at any rate to show I wasn't absolutely un-worthy.I wanted to do something."


"Why should you think it necessary …" Lenina began, but leftthe sentence unfinished. There was a note of irritation inher voice. When one has leant forward, nearer and nearer,with parted lips–only to find oneself, quite suddenly, as aclumsy oaf scrambles to his feet, leaning towards nothing atall–well, there is a reason, even with half a gramme of somacirculating in one's blood-stream, a genuine reason forannoyance.

"At Malpais," the Savage was incoherently mumbling, "you hadto bring her the skin of a mountain lion–I mean, when youwanted to marry some one. Or else a wolf."

"There aren't any lions in England," Lenina almost snapped.

"And even if there were," the Savage added, with suddencontemptuous resentment, "people would kill them out ofhelicopters, I suppose, with poison gas or something. Iwouldn't do that, Lenina." He squared his shoulders, heventured to look at her and was met with a stare of annoyedincomprehension. Confused, "I'll do anything," he went on,more and more incoherently. "Anything you tell me. There besome sports are painful–you know. But their labour delightin them sets off. That's what I feel. I mean I'd sweep thefloor if you wanted."

"But we've got vacuum cleaners here," said Lenina inbewilderment. "It isn't necessary."

"No, of course it isn't necessary. But some kinds ofbaseness are nobly undergone. I'd like to undergo somethingnobly. Don't you see?"

"But if there are vacuum cleaners …"

"That's not the point."

"And Epsilon Semi-Morons to work them," she went on, "well,really, why?"

"Why? But for you, for you. Just to show that I …"

"And what on earth vacuum cleaners have got to do with lions…"

"To show how much …"

"Or lions with being glad to see me …" She was getting moreand more exasperated.

"How much I love you, Lenina," he brought out almostdesperately.

An emblem of the inner tide of startled elation, the bloodrushed up into Lenina's cheeks. "Do you mean it, John?"

"But I hadn't meant to say so," cried the Savage, clasping


his hands in a kind of agony. "Not until … Listen, Lenina;in Malpais people get married."

"Get what?" The irritation had begun to creep back into hervoice. What was he talking about now?

"For always. They make a promise to live together foralways."

"What a horrible idea!" Lenina was genuinely shocked.

"Outliving beauty's outward with a mind that cloth renewswifter than blood decays."

"What?"

"It's like that in Shakespeare too. 'If thou cost break hervirgin knot before all sanctimonious ceremonies may withfull and holy rite …'"

"For Ford's sake, John, talk sense. I can't understand aword you say. First it's vacuum cleaners; then it's knots.You're driving me crazy." She jumped up and, as thoughafraid that he might run away from her physically, as wellas with his mind, caught him by the wrist. "Answer me thisquestion: do you really like me, or don't you?"

There was a moment's silence; then, in a very low voice, "Ilove you more than anything in the world," he said.

"Then why on earth didn't you say so?" she cried, and sointense was her exasperation that she drove her sharp nailsinto the skin of his wrist. "Instead of drivelling awayabout knots and vacuum cleaners and lions, and making memiserable for weeks and weeks."

She released his hand and flung it angrily away from her.

"If I didn't like you so much," she said, "I'd be furiouswith you."

And suddenly her arms were round his neck; he felt her lipssoft against his own. So deliciously soft, so warm andelectric that inevitably he found himself thinking of theembraces in Three Weeks in a Helicopter. Ooh! ooh! thestereoscopic blonde and anh! the more than real blackamoor.Horror, horror, horror … he fired to disengage himself; butLenina tightened her embrace.

"Why didn't you say so?" she whispered, drawing back herface to look at him. Her eyes were tenderly reproachful.

"The murkiest den, the most opportune place" (the voice ofconscience thundered poetically), "the strongest suggestionour worser genius can, shall never melt mine honour intolust. Never, never!" he resolved.

"You silly boy!" she was saying. "I wanted you so much. Andif you wanted me too, why didn't you? …"


"But, Lenina …" he began protesting; and as she immediatelyuntwined her arms, as she stepped away from him, he thought,for a moment, that she had taken his unspoken hint. But whenshe unbuckled her white patent cartridge belt and hung itcarefully over the back of a chair, he began to suspect thathe had been mistaken.

"Lenina!" he repeated apprehensively.

She put her hand to her neck and gave a long vertical pull;her white sailor's blouse was ripped to the hem; suspicioncondensed into a too, too solid certainty. "Lenina, what areyou doing?"

Zip, zip! Her answer was wordless. She stepped out of herbell-bottomed trousers. Her zippicamiknicks were a paleshell pink. The Arch-Community-Songster's golden T dangledat her breast.

"For those milk paps that through the window bars bore atmen's eyes...." The singing, thundering, magical words madeher seem doubly dangerous, doubly alluring. Soft, soft, buthow piercing! boring and drilling into reason, tunnellingthrough resolution. "The strongest oaths are straw to thefire i' the blood. Be more abstemious, or else …"

Zip! The rounded pinkness fell apart like a neatly dividedapple. A wriggle of the arms, a lifting first of the rightfoot, then the left: the zippicamiknicks were lying lifelessand as though deflated on the floor.

Still wearing her shoes and socks, and her rakishly tiltedround white cap, she advanced towards him. "Darling.Darling! If only you'd said so before!" She held out herarms.

But instead of also saying "Darling!" and holding out hisarms, the Savage retreated in terror, flapping his hands ather as though he were trying to scare away some intrudingand dangerous animal. Four backwards steps, and he wasbrought to bay against the wall.

"Sweet!" said Lenina and, laying her hands on his shoulders,pressed herself against him. "Put your arms round me," shecommanded. "Hug me till you drug me, honey." She too hadpoetry at her command, knew words that sang and were spellsand beat drums. "Kiss me"; she closed her eyes, she let hervoice sink to a sleepy murmur, "Kiss me till I'm in a coma.Hug me, honey, snuggly …"

The Savage caught her by the wrists, tore her hands from hisshoulders, thrust her roughly away at arm's length.

"Ow, you're hurting me, you're … oh!" She was suddenlysilent. Terror had made her forget the pain. Opening hereyes, she had seen his face–no, not his face, a ferociousstranger's, pale, distorted, twitching with some insane,inexplicable fury. Aghast, "But what is it, John?" shewhispered. He did not answer, but only stared into her facewith those mad eyes. The hands that held her wrists weretrembling. He breathed deeply and irregularly. Faint almost


to imperceptibility, but appalling, she suddenly heard thegrinding of his teeth. "What is it?" she almost screamed.

And as though awakened by her cry he caught her by theshoulders and shook her. "Whore!" he shouted "Whore!Impudent strumpet!"

"Oh, don't, do-on't," she protested in a voice madegrotesquely tremulous by his shaking.

"Whore!"

"Plea-ease."

"Damned whore!"

"A gra-amme is be-etter …" she began.

The Savage pushed her away with such force that shestaggered and fell. "Go," he shouted, standing over hermenacingly, "get out of my sight or I'll kill you." Heclenched his fists.

Lenina raised her arm to cover her face. "No, please don't,John …"

"Hurry up. Quick!"

One arm still raised, and following his every movement witha terrified eye, she scrambled to her feet and stillcrouching, still covering her head, made a dash for thebathroom.

The noise of that prodigious slap by which her departure wasaccelerated was like a pistol shot.

"Ow!" Lenina bounded forward.

Safely locked into the bathroom, she had leisure to takestock of her injuries. Standing with her back to the mirror,she twisted her head. Looking over her left shoulder shecould see the imprint of an open hand standing out distinctand crimson on the pearly flesh. Gingerly she rubbed thewounded spot.

Outside, in the other room, the Savage was striding up anddown, marching, marching to the drums and music of magicalwords. "The wren goes to't and the small gilded fly doeslecher in my sight." Maddeningly they rumbled in his ears."The fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to't with a moreriotous appetite. Down from the waist they are Centaurs,though women all above. But to the girdle do the godsinherit. Beneath is all the fiend's. There's hell, there'sdarkness, there is the sulphurous pit, burning scalding,stench, consumption; fie, fie, fie, pain, pain! Give me anounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination."

"John!" ventured a small ingratiating voice from thebathroom. "John!"

"O thou weed, who are so lovely fair and smell'st so sweet


that the sense aches at thee. Was this most goodly book madeto write 'whore' upon? Heaven stops the nose at it …"

But her perfume still hung about him, his jacket was whitewith the powder that had scented her velvety body. "Impudentstrumpet, impudent strumpet, impudent strumpet." Theinexorable rhythm beat itself out. "Impudent …"

"John, do you think I might have my clothes?"

He picked up the bell-bottomed trousers, the blouse, thezippicamiknicks.

"Open!" he ordered, kicking the door.

"No, I won't." The voice was frightened and defiant.

"Well, how do you expect me to give them to you?"

"Push them through the ventilator over the door."

He did what she suggested and returned to his uneasy pacingof the room. "Impudent strumpet, impudent strumpet. Thedevil Luxury with his fat rump and potato finger …"

"John."

He would not answer. "Fat rump and potato finger."

"John."

"What is it?" he asked gruffly.

"I wonder if you'd mind giving me my Malthusian belt."

Lenina sat, listening to the footsteps in the other room,wondering, as she listened, how long he was likely to gotramping up and down like that; whether she would have towait until he left the flat; or if it would be safe, afterallowing his madness a reasonable time to subside, to openthe bathroom door and make a dash for it.

She was interrupted in the midst of these uneasyspeculations by the sound of the telephone bell ringing inthe other room. Abruptly the tramping ceased. She heard thevoice of the Savage parleying with silence.

"Hullo."

. . . . .

"Yes."

. . . . .

"If I do not usurp myself, I am."

. . . . .

"Yes, didn't you hear me say so? Mr. Savage speaking."

. . . . .


"What? Who's ill? Of course it interests me."

. . . . .

"But is it serious? Is she really bad? I'll go at once …"

. . . . .

"Not in her rooms any more? Where has she been taken?"

. . . . .

"Oh, my God! What's the address?"

. . . . .

"Three Park Lane–is that it? Three? Thanks."

Lenina heard the click of the replaced receiver, thenhurrying steps. A door slammed. There was silence. Was hereally gone?

With an infinity of precautions she opened the door aquarter of an inch; peeped through the crack; was encouragedby the view of emptiness; opened a little further, and puther whole head out; finally tiptoed into the room; stood fora few seconds with strongly beating heart, listening,listening; then darted to the front door, opened, slippedthrough, slammed, ran. It was not till she was in the liftand actually dropping down the well that she began to feelherself secure.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE Park Lane Hospital for the Dying was a sixty-story towerof primrose tiles. As the Savage stepped out of histaxicopter a convoy of gaily-coloured aerial hearses rosewhirring from the roof and darted away across the Park,westwards, bound for the Slough Crematorium. At the liftgates the presiding porter gave him the information herequired, and he dropped down to Ward 81 (a GallopingSenility ward, the porter explained) on the seventeenthfloor.

It was a large room bright with sunshine and yellow paint,and containing twenty beds, all occupied. Linda was dying incompany–in company and with all the modern conveniences. Theair was continuously alive with gay synthetic melodies. Atthe foot of every bed, confronting its moribund occupant,was a television box. Television was left on, a running tap,from morning till night. Every quarter of an hour theprevailing perfume of the room was automatically changed."We try," explained the nurse, who had taken charge of theSavage at the door, "we try to create a thoroughly pleasantatmosphere here–something between a first-class hotel and afeely-palace, if you take my meaning."

"Where is she?" asked the Savage, ignoring these politeexplanations.


The nurse was offended. "You are in a hurry," she said.

"Is there any hope?" he asked.

"You mean, of her not dying?" (He nodded.) "No, of coursethere isn't. When somebody's sent here, there's no …"Startled by the expression of distress on his pale face, shesuddenly broke off. "Why, whatever is the matter?" sheasked. She was not accustomed to this kind of thing invisitors. (Not that there were many visitors anyhow: or anyreason why there should be many visitors.) "You're notfeeling ill, are you?"

He shook his head. "She's my mother," he said in a scarcelyaudible voice.

The nurse glanced at him with startled, horrified eyes; thenquickly looked away. From throat to temple she was all onehot blush.

"Take me to her," said the Savage, making an effort to speakin an ordinary tone.

Still blushing, she led the way down the ward. Faces stillfresh and unwithered (for senility galloped so hard that ithad no time to age the cheeks–only the heart and brain)turned as they passed. Their progress was followed by theblank, incurious eyes of second infancy. The Savageshuddered as he looked.

Linda was lying in the last of the long row of beds, next tothe wall. Propped up on pillows, she was watching theSemi-finals of the South American Riemann-Surface TennisChampionship, which were being played in silent anddiminished reproduction on the screen of the television boxat the foot of the bed. Hither and thither across theirsquare of illuminated glass the little figures noiselesslydarted, like fish in an aquarium–the silent but agitatedinhabitants of another world.

Linda looked on, vaguely and uncomprehendingly smiling. Herpale, bloated face wore an expression of imbecile happiness.Every now and then her eyelids closed, and for a few secondsshe seemed to be dozing. Then with a little start she wouldwake up again–wake up to the aquarium antics of the TennisChampions, to the Super-Vox-Wurlitzeriana rendering of "Hugme till you drug me, honey," to the warm draught of verbenathat came blowing through the ventilator above herhead–would wake to these things, or rather to a dream ofwhich these things, transformed and embellished by the somain her blood, were the marvellous constituents, and smileonce more her broken and discoloured smile of infantilecontentment.

"Well, I must go," said the nurse. "I've got my batch ofchildren coming. Besides, there's Number 3." She pointed upthe ward. "Might go off any minute now. Well, make yourselfcomfortable." She walked briskly away.

The Savage sat down beside the bed.


"Linda," he whispered, taking her hand.

At the sound of her name, she turned. Her vague eyesbrightened with recognition. She squeezed his hand, shesmiled, her lips moved; then quite suddenly her head fellforward. She was asleep. He sat watching her–seeking throughthe tired flesh, seeking and finding that young, bright facewhich had stooped over his childhood in Malpais, remembering(and he closed his eyes) her voice, her movements, all theevents of their life together. "Streptocock-Gee to Banbury T…" How beautiful her singing had been! And those childishrhymes, how magically strange and mysterious!

A, B, C, vitamin D:The fat's in the liver, the cod's in the sea.

He felt the hot tears welling up behind his eyelids as herecalled the words and Linda's voice as she repeated them.And then the reading lessons: The tot is in the pot, the catis on the mat; and the Elementary Instructions for BetaWorkers in the Embryo Store. And long evenings by the fireor, in summertime, on the roof of the little house, when shetold him those stories about the Other Place, outside theReservation: that beautiful, beautiful Other Place, whosememory, as of a heaven, a paradise of goodness andloveliness, he still kept whole and intact, undefiled bycontact with the reality of this real London, these actualcivilized men and women.

A sudden noise of shrill voices made him open his eyes and,after hastily brushing away the tears, look round. Whatseemed an interminable stream of identical eight-year-oldmale twins was pouring into the room. Twin after twin, twinafter twin, they came–a nightmare. Their faces, theirrepeated face–for there was only one between the lot ofthem–puggishly stared, all nostrils and pale goggling eyes.Their uniform was khaki. All their mouths hung open.Squealing and chattering they entered. In a moment, itseemed, the ward was maggoty with them. They swarmed betweenthe beds, clambered over, crawled under, peeped into thetelevision boxes, made faces at the patients.

Linda astonished and rather alarmed them. A group stoodclustered at the foot of her bed, staring with thefrightened and stupid curiosity of animals suddenlyconfronted by the unknown.

"Oh, look, look!" They spoke in low, scared voices."Whatever is the matter with her? Why is she so fat?"

They had never seen a face like hers before–had never seen aface that was not youthful and taut-skinned, a body that hadceased to be slim and upright. All these moribundsexagenarians had the appearance of childish girls. Atforty-four, Linda seemed, by contrast, a monster of flaccidand distorted senility.

"Isn't she awful?" came the whispered comments. "Look at herteeth!"


Suddenly from under the bed a pug-faced twin popped upbetween John's chair and the wall, and began peering intoLinda's sleeping face.

"I say …" he began; but the sentence ended prematurely in asqueal. The Savage had seized him by the collar, lifted himclear over the chair and, with a smart box on the ears, senthim howling away.

His yells brought the Head Nurse hurrying to the rescue.

"What have you been doing to him?" she demanded fiercely. "Iwon't have you striking the children."

"Well then, keep them away from this bed." The Savage'svoice was trembling with indignation. "What are these filthylittle brats doing here at all? It's disgraceful!"

"Disgraceful? But what do you mean? They're beingdeath-conditioned. And I tell you," she warned himtruculently, "if I have any more of your interference withtheir conditioning, I'll send for the porters and have youthrown out."

The Savage rose to his feet and took a couple of stepstowards her. His movements and the expression on his facewere so menacing that the nurse fell back in terror. With agreat effort he checked himself and, without speaking,turned away and sat down again by the bed.

Reassured, but with a dignity that was a trifle shrill anduncertain, "I've warned you," said the nurse, "I've warnedyou," said the nurse, "so mind." Still, she led the tooinquisitive twins away and made them join in the game ofhunt-the-zipper, which had been organized by one of hercolleagues at the other end of the room.

"Run along now and have your cup of caffeine solution,dear," she said to the other nurse. The exercise ofauthority restored her confidence, made her feel better."Now children!" she called.

Linda had stirred uneasily, had opened her eyes for amoment, looked vaguely around, and then once more droppedoff to sleep. Sitting beside her, the Savage tried hard torecapture his mood of a few minutes before. "A, B, C,vitamin D," he repeated to himself, as though the words werea spell that would restore the dead past to life. But thespell was ineffective. Obstinately the beautiful memoriesrefused to rise; there was only a hateful resurrection ofjealousies and uglinesses and miseries. Popé with the bloodtrickling down from his cut shoulder; and Linda hideouslyasleep, and the flies buzzing round the spilt mescal on thefloor beside the bed; and the boys calling those names asshe passed. … Ah, no, no! He shut his eyes, he shook hishead in strenuous denial of these memories. "A, B, C,vitamin D …" He tried to think of those times when he sat onher knees and she put her arms about him and sang, over andover again, rocking him, rocking him to sleep. "A, B, C,vitamin D, vitamin D, vitamin D …"

The Super-Vox-Wurlitzeriana had risen to a sobbing


crescendo; and suddenly the verbena gave place, in thescent-circulating system, to an intense patchouli. Lindastirred, woke up, stared for a few seconds bewilderly at theSemi-finalists, then, lifting her face, sniffed once ortwice at the newly perfumed air and suddenly smiled–a smileof childish ecstasy.

"Popé!" she murmured, and closed her eyes. "Oh, I do so likeit, I do …" She sighed and let herself sink back into thepillows.

"But, Linda!" The Savage spoke imploringly, "Don't you knowme?" He had tried so hard, had done his very best; whywouldn't she allow him to forget? He squeezed her limp handalmost with violence, as though he would force her to comeback from this dream of ignoble pleasures, from these baseand hateful memories–back into the present, back intoreality: the appalling present, the awful reality–butsublime, but significant, but desperately importantprecisely because of the imminence of that which made themso fearful. "Don't you know me, Linda?"

He felt the faint answering pressure of her hand. The tearsstarted into his eyes. He bent over her and kissed her.

Her lips moved. "Popé!" she whispered again, and it was asthough he had had a pailful of ordure thrown in his face.

Anger suddenly boiled up in him. Balked for the second time,the passion of his grief had found another outlet, wastransformed into a passion of agonized rage.

"But I'm John!" he shouted. "I'm John!" And in his furiousmisery he actually caught her by the shoulder and shook her.

Linda's eyes fluttered open; she saw him, knewhim–"John!"–but situated the real face, the real and violenthands, in an imaginary world–among the inward and privateequivalents of patchouli and the Super-Wurlitzer, among thetransfigured memories and the strangely transposedsensations that constituted the universe of her dream. Sheknew him for John, her son, but fancied him an intruder intothat paradisal Malpais where she had been spending hersoma-holiday with Popé. He was angry because she liked Popé,he was shaking her because Popé was there in the bed–asthough there were something wrong, as though all civilizedpeople didn't do the same. "Every one belongs to every …"Her voice suddenly died into an almost inaudible breathlesscroaking. Her mouth fell open: she made a desperate effortto fill her lungs with air. But it was as though she hadforgotten how to breathe. She tried to cry out–but no soundcame; only the terror of her staring eyes revealed what shewas suffering. Her hands went to her throat, then clawed atthe air–the air she could no longer breathe, the air that,for her, had ceased to exist.

The Savage was on his feet, bent over her. "What is it,Linda? What is it?" His voice was imploring; it was asthough he were begging to be reassured.

The look she gave him was charged with an unspeakable


terror–with terror and, it seemed to him, reproach.

She tried to raise herself in bed, but fell back on to thepillows. Her face was horribly distorted, her lips blue.

The Savage turned and ran up the ward.

"Quick, quick!" he shouted. "Quick!"

Standing in the centre of a ring of zipper-hunting twins,the Head Nurse looked round. The first moment's astonishmentgave place almost instantly to disapproval. "Don't shout!Think of the little ones," she said, frowning. "You mightdecondition … But what are you doing?" He had broken throughthe ring. "Be careful!" A child was yelling.

"Quick, quick!" He caught her by the sleeve, dragged herafter him. "Quick! Something's happened. I've killed her."

By the time they were back at the end of the ward Linda wasdead.

The Savage stood for a moment in frozen silence, then fellon his knees beside the bed and, covering his face with hishands, sobbed uncontrollably.

The nurse stood irresolute, looking now at the kneelingfigure by the bed (the scandalous exhibition!) and now (poorchildren!) at the twins who had stopped their hunting of thezipper and were staring from the other end of the ward,staring with all their eyes and nostrils at the shockingscene that was being enacted round Bed 20. Should she speakto him? try to bring him back to a sense of decency? remindhim of where he was? of what fatal mischief he might do tothese poor innocents? Undoing all their wholesomedeath-conditioning with this disgusting outcry–as thoughdeath were something terrible, as though any one mattered asmuch as all that! It might give them the most disastrousideas about the subject, might upset them into reacting inthe entirely wrong, the utterly anti-social way.

She stepped forward, she touched him on the shoulder. "Can'tyou behave?" she said in a low, angry voice. But, lookingaround, she saw that half a dozen twins were already ontheir feet and advancing down the ward. The circle wasdisintegrating. In another moment … No, the risk was toogreat; the whole Group might be put back six or seven monthsin its conditioning. She hurried back towards her menacedcharges.

"Now, who wants a chocolate éclair?" she asked in a loud,cheerful tone.

"Me!" yelled the entire Bokanovsky Group in chorus. Bed 20was completely forgotten.

"Oh, God, God, God …" the Savage kept repeating to himself.In the chaos of grief and remorse that filled his mind itwas the one articulate word. "God!" he whispered it aloud."God …"

"Whatever is he saying?" said a voice, very near, distinct


and shrill through the warblings of the Super-Wurlitzer.

The Savage violently started and, uncovering his face,looked round. Five khaki twins, each with the stump of along éclair in his right hand, and their identical facesvariously smeared with liquid chocolate, were standing in arow, puggily goggling at him.

They met his eyes and simultaneously grinned. One of thempointed with his éclair butt.

"Is she dead?" he asked.

The Savage stared at them for a moment in silence. Then insilence he rose to his feet, in silence slowly walkedtowards the door.

"Is she dead?" repeated the inquisitive twin trotting at hisside.

The Savage looked down at him and still without speakingpushed him away. The twin fell on the floor and at oncebegan to howl. The Savage did not even look round.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE menial staff of the Park Lane Hospital for the Dyingconsisted of one hundred and sixty-two Deltas divided intotwo Bokanovsky Groups of eighty-four red headed female andseventy-eight dark dolychocephalic male twins, respectively.At six, when their working day was over, the two Groupsassembled in the vestibule of the Hospital and were servedby the Deputy Sub-Bursar with their soma ration.

From the lift the Savage stepped out into the midst of them.But his mind was elsewhere–with death, with his grief, andhis remorse; mechanicaly, without consciousness of what hewas doing, he began to shoulder his way through the crowd.

"Who are you pushing? Where do you think you're going?"

High, low, from a multitude of separate throats, only twovoices squeaked or growled. Repeated indefinitely, as thoughby a train of mirrors, two faces, one a hairless andfreckled moon haloed in orange, the other a thin, beakedbird-mask, stubbly with two days' beard, turned angrilytowards him. Their words and, in his ribs, the sharp nudgingof elbows, broke through his unawareness. He woke once moreto external reality, looked round him, knew what he saw–knewit, with a sinking sense of horror and disgust, for therecurrent delirium of his days and nights, the nightmare ofswarming indistinguishable sameness. Twins, twins. … Likemaggots they had swarmed defilingly over the mystery ofLinda's death. Maggots again, but larger, full grown, theynow crawled across his grief and his repentance. He haltedand, with bewildered and horrified eyes, stared round him atthe khaki mob, in the midst of which, overtopping it by afull head, he stood. "How many goodly creatures are therehere!" The singing words mocked him derisively. "How


beauteous mankind is! O brave new world …"

"Soma distribution!" shouted a loud voice. "In good order,please. Hurry up there."

A door had been opened, a table and chair carried into thevestibule. The voice was that of a jaunty young Alpha, whohad entered carrying a black iron cash-box. A murmur ofsatisfaction went up from the expectant twins. They forgotall about the Savage. Their attention was now focused on theblack cash-box, which the young man had placed on the table,and was now in process of unlocking. The lid was lifted.

"Oo-oh!" said all the hundred and sixty-two simultaneously,as though they were looking at fireworks.

The young man took out a handful of tiny pill-boxes. "Now,"he said peremptorily, "step forward, please. One at a time,and no shoving."

One at a time, with no shoving, the twins stepped forward.First two males, then a female, then another male, thenthree females, then …

The Savage stood looking on. "O brave new world, O brave newworld …" In his mind the singing words seemed to changetheir tone. They had mocked him through his misery andremorse, mocked him with how hideous a note of cynicalderision! Fiendishly laughing, they had insisted on the lowsqualor, the nauseous ugliness of the nightmare. Now,suddenly, they trumpeted a call to arms. "O brave newworld!" Miranda was proclaiming the possibility ofloveliness, the possibility of transforming even thenightmare into something fine and noble. "O brave newworld!" It was a challenge, a command.

"No shoving there now!" shouted the Deputy Sub-Bursar in afury. He slammed down he lid of his cash-box. "I shall stopthe distribution unless I have good behaviour."

The Deltas muttered, jostled one another a little, and thenwere still. The threat had been effective. Deprivation ofsoma–appalling thought!

"That's better," said the young man, and reopened hiscash-box.

Linda had been a slave, Linda had died; others should livein freedom, and the world be made beautiful. A reparation, aduty. And suddenly it was luminously clear to the Savagewhat he must do; it was as though a shutter had been opened,a curtain drawn back.

"Now," said the Deputy Sub-Bursar.

Another khaki female stepped forward.

"Stop!" called the Savage in a loud and ringing voice."Stop!"


He pushed his way to the table; the Deltas stared at himwith astonishment.

"Ford!" said the Deputy Sub-Bursar, below his breath. "It'sthe Savage." He felt scared.

"Listen, I beg of you," cried the Savage earnestly. "Lend meyour ears …" He had never spoken in public before, and foundit very difficult to express what he wanted to say. "Don'ttake that horrible stuff. It's poison, it's poison."

"I say, Mr. Savage," said the Deputy Sub-Bursar, smilingpropitiatingly. "Would you mind letting me …"

"Poison to soul as well as body."

"Yes, but let me get on with my distribution, won't you?There's a good fellow." With the cautious tenderness of onewho strokes a notoriously vicious animal, he patted theSavage's arm. "Just let me …"

"Never!" cried the Savage.

"But look here, old man …"

"Throw it all away, that horrible poison."

The words "Throw it all away" pierced through the enfoldinglayers of incomprehension to the quick of the Delta'sconsciousness. An angry murmur went up from the crowd.

"I come to bring you freedom," said the Savage, turning backtowards the twins. "I come …"

The Deputy Sub-Bursar heard no more; he had slipped out ofthe vestibule and was looking up a number in the telephonebook.

"Not in his own rooms," Bernard summed up. "Not in mine, notin yours. Not at the Aphroditaum; not at the Centre or theCollege. Where can he have got to?"

Helmholtz shrugged his shoulders. They had come back fromtheir work expecting to find the Savage waiting for them atone or other of the usual meeting-places, and there was nosign of the fellow. Which was annoying, as they had meant tonip across to Biarritz in Helmholtz's four-seatersporticopter. They'd be late for dinner if he didn't comesoon.

"We'll give him five more minutes," said Helmholtz. "If hedoesn't turn up by then, we'll …"

The ringing of the telephone bell interrupted him. He pickedup the receiver. "Hullo. Speaking." Then, after a longinterval of listening, "Ford in Flivver!" he swore. "I'llcome at once."

"What is it?" Bernard asked.

"A fellow I know at the Park Lane Hospital," said Helmholtz.


"The Savage is there. Seems to have gone mad. Anyhow, it'surgent. Will you come with me?"

Together they hurried along the corridor to the lifts.

"But do you like being slaves?" the Savage was saying asthey entered the Hospital. His face was flushed, his eyesbright with ardour and indignation. "Do you like beingbabies? Yes, babies. Mewling and puking," he added,exasperated by their bestial stupidity into throwing insultsat those he had come to save. The insults bounced off theircarapace of thick stupidity; they stared at him with a blankexpression of dull and sullen resentment in their eyes."Yes, puking!" he fairly shouted. Grief and remorse,compassion and duty–all were forgotten now and, as it were,absorbed into an intense overpowering hatred of these lessthan human monsters. "Don't you want to be free and men?Don't you even understand what manhood and freedom are?"Rage was making him fluent; the words came easily, in arush. "Don't you?" he repeated, but got no answer to hisquestion. "Very well then," he went on grimly. "I'll teachyou; I'll make you be free whether you want to or not." Andpushing open a window that looked on to the inner court ofthe Hospital, he began to throw the little pill-boxes ofsoma tablets in handfuls out into the area.

For a moment the khaki mob was silent, petrified, at thespectacle of this wanton sacrilege, with amazement andhorror.

"He's mad," whispered Bernard, staring with wide open eyes."They'll kill him. They'll …" A great shout suddenly went upfrom the mob; a wave of movement drove it menacingly towardsthe Savage. "Ford help him!" said Bernard, and averted hiseyes.

"Ford helps those who help themselves." And with a laugh,actually a laugh of exultation, Helmholtz Watson pushed hisway through the crowd.

"Free, free!" the Savage shouted, and with one handcontinued to throw the soma into the area while, with theother, he punched the indistinguishable faces of hisassailants. "Free!" And suddenly there was Helmholtz at hisside–"Good old Helmholtz!"–also punching–"Men at last!"–andin the interval also throwing the poison out by handfulsthrough the open window. "Yes, men! men!" and there was nomore poison left. He picked up the cash-box and showed themits black emptiness. "You're free!"

Howling, the Deltas charged with a redoubled fury.

Hesitant on the fringes of the battle. "They're done for,"said Bernard and, urged by a sudden impulse, ran forward tohelp them; then thought better of it and halted; then,ashamed, stepped forward again; then again thought better ofit, and was standing in an agony of humiliatedindecision–thinking that they might be killed if he didn'thelp them, and that he might be killed if he did–when (Ford


be praised!), goggle-eyed and swine-snouted in theirgas-masks, in ran the police.

Bernard dashed to meet them. He waved his arms; and it wasaction, he was doing something. He shouted "Help!" severaltimes, more and more loudly so as to give himself theillusion of helping. "Help! Help! HELP!"

The policemen pushed him out of the way and got on withtheir work. Three men with spraying machines buckled totheir shoulders pumped thick clouds of soma vapour into theair. Two more were busy round the portable Synthetic MusicBox. Carrying water pistols charged with a powerfulanæsthetic, four others had pushed their way into the crowdand were methodically laying out, squirt by squirt, the moreferocious of the fighters.

"Quick, quick!" yelled Bernard. "They'll be killed if youdon't hurry. They'll … Oh!" Annoyed by his chatter, one ofthe policemen had given him a shot from his water pistol.Bernard stood for a second or two wambling unsteadily onlegs that seemed to have lost their bones, their tendons,their muscles, to have become mere sticks of jelly, and atlast not even jelly-water: he tumbled in a heap on thefloor.

Suddenly, from out of the Synthetic Music Box a Voice beganto speak. The Voice of Reason, the Voice of Good Feeling.The sound-track roll was unwinding itself in SyntheticAnti-Riot Speech Number Two (Medium Strength). Straight fromthe depths of a non-existent heart, "My friends, myfriends!" said the Voice so pathetically, with a note ofsuch infinitely tender reproach that, behind their gasmasks, even the policemen's eyes were momentarily dimmedwith tears, "what is the meaning of this? Why aren't you allbeing happy and good together? Happy and good," the Voicerepeated. "At peace, at peace." It trembled, sank into awhisper and momentarily expired. "Oh, I do want you to behappy," it began, with a yearning earnestness. "I do so wantyou to be good! Please, please be good and …"

Two minutes later the Voice and the soma vapour had producedtheir effect. In tears, the Deltas were kissing and huggingone another–half a dozen twins at a time in a comprehensiveembrace. Even Helmholtz and the Savage were almost crying. Afresh supply of pill-boxes was brought in from the Bursary;a new distribution was hastily made and, to the sound of theVoice's richly affectionate, baritone valedictions, thetwins dispersed, blubbering as though their hearts wouldbreak. "Good-bye, my dearest, dearest friends, Ford keepyou! Good-bye, my dearest, dearest friends, Ford keep you.Good-bye my dearest, dearest …"

When the last of the Deltas had gone the policeman switchedoff the current. The angelic Voice fell silent.

"Will you come quietly?" asked the Sergeant, "or must weanæsthetize?" He pointed his water pistol menacingly.


"Oh, we'll come quietly," the Savage answered, dabbingalternately a cut lip, a scratched neck, and a bitten lefthand.

Still keeping his handkerchief to his bleeding noseHelmholtz nodded in confirmation.

Awake and having recovered the use of his legs, Bernard hadchosen this moment to move as inconspicuously as he couldtowards the door.

"Hi, you there," called the Sergeant, and a swine-maskedpoliceman hurried across the room and laid a hand on theyoung man's shoulder.

Bernard turned with an expression of indignant innocence.Escaping? He hadn't dreamed of such a thing. "Though what onearth you want me for," he said to the Sergeant, "I reallycan't imagine."

"You're a friend of the prisoner's, aren't you?"

"Well …" said Bernard, and hesitated. No, he really couldn'tdeny it. "Why shouldn't I be?" he asked.

"Come on then," said the Sergeant, and led the way towardsthe door and the waiting police car.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE ROOM into which the three were ushered was theController's study.

"His fordship will be down in a moment." The Gamma butlerleft them to themselves.

Helmholtz laughed aloud.

"It's more like a caffeine-solution party than a trial," hesaid, and let himself fall into the most luxurious of thepneumatic arm-chairs. "Cheer up, Bernard," he added,catching sight of his friend's green unhappy face. ButBernard would not be cheered; without answering, withouteven looking at Helmholtz, he went and sat down on the mostuncomfortable chair in the room, carefully chosen in theobscure hope of somehow deprecating the wrath of the higherpowers.

The Savage meanwhile wandered restlessly round the room,peering with a vague superficial inquisitiveness at thebooks in the shelves, at the sound-track rolls and readingmachine bobbins in their numbered pigeon-holes. On the tableunder the window lay a massive volume bound in limp blackleather-surrogate, and stamped with large golden T's. Hepicked it up and opened it. MY LIFE AND WORK, BY OUR FORD.The book had been published at Detroit by the Society forthe Propagation of Fordian Knowledge. Idly he turned thepages, read a sentence here, a paragraph there, and had justcome to the conclusion that the book didn't interest him,


when the door opened, and the Resident World Controller forWestern Europe walked briskly into the room.

Mustapha Mond shook hands with all three of them; but it wasto the Savage that he addressed himself. "So you don't muchlike civilization, Mr. Savage," he said.

The Savage looked at him. He had been prepared to lie, tobluster, to remain sullenly unresponsive; but, reassured bythe good-humoured intelligence of the Controller's face, hedecided to tell the truth, straightforwardly. "No." He shookhis head.

Bernard started and looked horrified. What would theController think? To be labelled as the friend of a man whosaid that he didn't like civilization–said it openly and, ofall people, to the Controller–it was terrible. "But, John,"he began. A look from Mustapha Mond reduced him to an abjectsilence.

"Of course," the Savage went on to admit, "there are somevery nice things. All that music in the air, for instance …"

"Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum aboutmy ears and sometimes voices."

The Savage's face lit up with a sudden pleasure. "Have youread it too?" he asked. "I thought nobody knew about thatbook here, in England."

"Almost nobody. I'm one of the very few. It's prohibited,you see. But as I make the laws here, I can also break them.With impunity, Mr. Marx," he added, turning to Bernard."Which I'm afraid you can't do."

Bernard sank into a yet more hopeless misery.

"But why is it prohibited?" asked the Savage. In theexcitement of meeting a man who had read Shakespeare he hadmomentarily forgotten everything else.

The Controller shrugged his shoulders. "Because it's old;that's the chief reason. We haven't any use for old thingshere."

"Even when they're beautiful?"

"Particularly when they're beautiful. Beauty's attractive,and we don't want people to be attracted by old things. Wewant them to like the new ones."

"But the new ones are so stupid and horrible. Those plays,where there's nothing but helicopters flying about and youfeel the people kissing." He made a grimace. "Goats andmonkeys!" Only in Othello's word could he find an adequatevehicle for his contempt and hatred.

"Nice tame animals, anyhow," the Controller murmuredparenthetically.


"Why don't you let them see Othello instead?"

"I've told you; it's old. Besides, they couldn't understandit."

Yes, that was true. He remembered how Helmholtz had laughedat Romeo and Juliet. "Well then," he said, after a pause,"something new that's like Othello, and that they couldunderstand."

"That's what we've all been wanting to write," saidHelmholtz, breaking a long silence.

"And it's what you never will write," said the Controller."Because, if it were really like Othello nobody couldunderstand it, however new it might be. And if were new, itcouldn't possibly be like Othello."

"Why not?"

"Yes, why not?" Helmholtz repeated. He too was forgettingthe unpleasant realities of the situation. Green withanxiety and apprehension, only Bernard remembered them; theothers ignored him. "Why not?"

"Because our world is not the same as Othello's world. Youcan't make flivvers without steel–and you can't maketragedies without social instability. The world's stablenow. People are happy; they get what they want, and theynever want what they can't get. They're well off; they'resafe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death;they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they'replagued with no mothers or fathers; they've got no wives, orchildren, or lovers to feel strongly about; they're soconditioned that they practically can't help behaving asthey ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong,there's soma. Which you go and chuck out of the window inthe name of liberty, Mr. Savage. Liberty!" He laughed."Expecting Deltas to know what liberty is! And now expectingthem to understand Othello! My good boy!"

The Savage was silent for a little. "All the same," heinsisted obstinately, "Othello's good, Othello's better thanthose feelies."

"Of course it is," the Controller agreed. "But that's theprice we have to pay for stability. You've got to choosebetween happiness and what people used to call high art.We've sacrificed the high art. We have the feelies and thescent organ instead."

"But they don't mean anything."

"They mean themselves; they mean a lot of agreeablesensations to the audience."

"But they're … they're told by an idiot."


The Controller laughed. "You're not being very polite toyour friend, Mr. Watson. One of our most distinguishedEmotional Engineers …"

"But he's right," said Helmholtz gloomily. "Because it isidiotic. Writing when there's nothing to say …"

"Precisely. But that require the most enormous ingenuity.You're making flivvers out of the absolute minimum ofsteel–works of art out of practically nothing but puresensation."

The Savage shook his head. "It all seems to me quitehorrible."

"Of course it does. Actual happiness always looks prettysqualid in comparison with the over-compensations formisery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly sospectacular as instability. And being contented has none ofthe glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of thepicturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fataloverthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand."

"I suppose not," said the Savage after a silence. "But needit be quite so bad as those twins?" He passed his hand overhis eyes as though he were trying to wipe away theremembered image of those long rows of identical midgets atthe assembling tables, those queued-up twin-herds at theentrance to the Brentford monorail station, those humanmaggots swarming round Linda's bed of death, the endlesslyrepeated face of his assailants. He looked at his bandagedleft hand and shuddered. "Horrible!"

"But how useful! I see you don't like our Bokanovsky Groups;but, I assure you, they're the foundation on whicheverything else is built. They're the gyroscope thatstabilizes the rocket plane of state on its unswervingcourse." The deep voice thrillingly vibrated; thegesticulating hand implied all space and the onrush of theirresistible machine. Mustapha Mond's oratory was almost upto synthetic standards.

"I was wondering," said the Savage, "why you had them atall–seeing that you can get whatever you want out of thosebottles. Why don't you make everybody an Alpha Double Pluswhile you're about it?"

Mustapha Mond laughed. "Because we have no wish to have ourthroats cut," he answered. "We believe in happiness andstability. A society of Alphas couldn't fail to be unstableand miserable. Imagine a factory staffed by Alphas–that isto say by separate and unrelated individuals of goodheredity and conditioned so as to be capable (within limits)of making a free choice and assuming responsibilities.Imagine it!" he repeated.

The Savage tried to imagine it, not very successfully.

"It's an absurdity. An Alpha-decanted, Alpha-conditioned manwould go mad if he had to do Epsilon Semi-Moron work–go mad,or start smashing things up. Alphas can be completely


socialized–but only on condition that you make them do Alphawork. Only an Epsilon can be expected to make Epsilonsacrifices, for the good reason that for him they aren'tsacrifices; they're the line of least resistance. Hisconditioning has laid down rails along which he's got torun. He can't help himself; he's foredoomed. Even afterdecanting, he's still inside a bottle–an invisible bottle ofinfantile and embryonic fixations. Each one of us, ofcourse," the Controller meditatively continued, "goesthrough life inside a bottle. But if we happen to be Alphas,our bottles are, relatively speaking, enormous. We shouldsuffer acutely if we were confined in a narrower space. Youcannot pour upper-caste champagne-surrogate into lower-castebottles. It's obvious theoretically. But it has also beenproved in actual practice. The result of the Cyprusexperiment was convincing."

"What was that?" asked the Savage.

Mustapha Mond smiled. "Well, you can call it an experimentin rebottling if you like. It began in A.F. 473. TheControllers had the island of Cyprus cleared of all itsexisting inhabitants and re-colonized with a speciallyprepared batch of twenty-two thousand Alphas. Allagricultural and industrial equipment was handed over tothem and they were left to manage their own affairs. Theresult exactly fulfilled all the theoretical predictions.The land wasn't properly worked; there were strikes in allthe factories; the laws were set at naught, ordersdisobeyed; all the people detailed for a spell of low-gradework were perpetually intriguing for high-grade jobs, andall the people with high-grade jobs were counter-intriguingat all costs to stay where they were. Within six years theywere having a first-class civil war. When nineteen out ofthe twenty-two thousand had been killed, the survivorsunanimously petitioned the World Controllers to resume thegovernment of the island. Which they did. And that was theend of the only society of Alphas that the world has everseen."

The Savage sighed, profoundly.

"The optimum population," said Mustapha Mond, "is modelledon the iceberg–eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninthabove."

"And they're happy below the water line?"

"Happier than above it. Happier than your friend here, forexample." He pointed.

"In spite of that awful work?"

"Awful? They don't find it so. On the contrary, they likeit. It's light, it's childishly simple. No strain on themind or the muscles. Seven and a half hours of mild,unexhausting labour, and then the soma ration and games andunrestricted copulation and the feelies. What more can theyask for? True," he added, "they might ask for shorter hours.And of course we could give them shorter hours. Technically,it would be perfectly simple to reduce all lower-casteworking hours to three or four a day. But would they be any


the happier for that? No, they wouldn't. The experiment wastried, more than a century and a half ago. The whole ofIreland was put on to the four-hour day. What was theresult? Unrest and a large increase in the consumption ofsoma; that was all. Those three and a half hours of extraleisure were so far from being a source of happiness, thatpeople felt constrained to take a holiday from them. TheInventions Office is stuffed with plans for labour-savingprocesses. Thousands of them." Mustapha Mond made a lavishgesture. "And why don't we put them into execution? For thesake of the labourers; it would be sheer cruelty to afflictthem with excessive leisure. It's the same with agriculture.We could synthesize every morsel of food, if we wanted to.But we don't. We prefer to keep a third of the population onthe land. For their own sakes–because it takes longer to getfood out of the land than out of a factory. Besides, we haveour stability to think of. We don't want to change. Everychange is a menace to stability. That's another reason whywe're so chary of applying new inventions. Every discoveryin pure science is potentially subversive; even science mustsometimes be treated as a possible enemy. Yes, evenscience."

Science? The Savage frowned. He knew the word. But what itexactly signified he could not say. Shakespeare and the oldmen of the pueblo had never mentioned science, and fromLinda he had only gathered the vaguest hints: science wassomething you made helicopters with, some thing that causedyou to laugh at the Corn Dances, something that preventedyou from being wrinkled and losing your teeth. He made adesperate effort to take the Controller's meaning.

"Yes," Mustapha Mond was saying, "that's another item in thecost of stability. It isn't only art that's incompatiblewith happiness; it's also science. Science is dangerous; wehave to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled."

"What?" said Helmholtz, in astonishment. "But we're alwayssaying that science is everything. It's a hypnopædicplatitude."

"Three times a week between thirteen and seventeen," put inBernard.

"And all the science propaganda we do at the College …"

"Yes; but what sort of science?" asked Mustapha Mondsarcastically. "You've had no scientific training, so youcan't judge. I was a pretty good physicist in my time. Toogood–good enough to realize that all our science is just acookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking thatnobody's allowed to question, and a list of recipes thatmustn't be added to except by special permission from thehead cook. I'm the head cook now. But I was an inquisitiveyoung scullion once. I started doing a bit of cooking on myown. Unorthodox cooking, illicit cooking. A bit of realscience, in fact." He was silent.

"What happened?" asked Helmholtz Watson.

The Controller sighed. "Very nearly what's going to happen


to you young men. I was on the point of being sent to anisland."

The words galvanized Bernard into violent and unseemlyactivity. "Send me to an island?" He jumped up, ran acrossthe room, and stood gesticulating in front of theController. "You can't send me. I haven't done anything. ltwas the others. I swear it was the others." He pointedaccusingly to Helmholtz and the Savage. "Oh, please don'tsend me to Iceland. I promise I'll do what I ought to do.Give me another chance. Please give me another chance." Thetears began to flow. "I tell you, it's their fault," hesobbed. "And not to Iceland. Oh please, your fordship,please …" And in a paroxysm of abjection he threw himself onhis knees before the Controller. Mustapha Mond tried to makehim get up; but Bernard persisted in his grovelling; thestream of words poured out inexhaustibly. In the end theController had to ring for his fourth secretary.

"Bring three men," he ordered, "and take Mr. Marx into abedroom. Give him a good soma vaporization and then put himto bed and leave him."

The fourth secretary went out and returned with threegreen-uniformed twin footmen. Still shouting and sobbing.Bernard was carried out.

"One would think he was going to have his throat cut," saidthe Controller, as the door closed. "Whereas, if he had thesmallest sense, he'd understand that his punishment isreally a reward. He's being sent to an island. That's tosay, he's being sent to a place where he'll meet the mostinteresting set of men and women to be found anywhere in theworld. All the people who, for one reason or another, havegot too self-consciously individual to fit intocommunity-life. All the people who aren't satisfied withorthodoxy, who've got independent ideas of their own. Everyone, in a word, who's any one. I almost envy you, Mr.Watson."

Helmholtz laughed. "Then why aren't you on an islandyourself?"

"Because, finally, I preferred this," the Controlleranswered. "I was given the choice: to be sent to an island,where I could have got on with my pure science, or to betaken on to the Controllers' Council with the prospect ofsucceeding in due course to an actual Controllership. Ichose this and let the science go." After a little silence,"Sometimes," he added, "I rather regret the science.Happiness is a hard master–particularly other people'shappiness. A much harder master, if one isn't conditioned toaccept it unquestioningly, than truth." He sighed, fellsilent again, then continued in a brisker tone, "Well,duty's duty. One can't consult one's own preference. I'minterested in truth, I like science. But truth's a menace,science is a public danger. As dangerous as it's beenbeneficent. It has given us the stablest equilibrium inhistory. China's was hopelessly insecure by comparison; eventhe primitive matriarchies weren't steadier than we are.


Thanks, l repeat, to science. But we can't allow science toundo its own good work. That's why we so carefully limit thescope of its researches–that's why I almost got sent to anisland. We don't allow it to deal with any but the mostimmediate problems of the moment. All other enquiries aremost sedulously discouraged. It's curious," he went on aftera little pause, "to read what people in the time of Our Fordused to write about scientific progress. They seemed to haveimagined that it could be allowed to go on indefinitely,regardless of everything else. Knowledge was the highestgood, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondaryand subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change eventhen. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift theemphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness.Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happinesskeeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't.And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power,then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty thatmattered. Still, in spite of everytung, unrestrictedscientific research was still permitted. People still wenton talking about truth and beauty as though they were thesovereign goods. Right up to the time of the Nine Years'War. That made them change their tune all right. What's thepoint of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombsare popping all around you? That was when science firstbegan to be controlled–after the Nine Years' War. Peoplewere ready to have even their appetites controlled then.Anything for a quiet life. We've gone on controlling eversince. It hasn't been very good for truth, of course. Butit's been very good for happiness. One can't have somethingfor nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for. You're payingfor it, Mr. Watson–paying because you happen to be too muchinterested in beauty. I was too much interested in truth; Ipaid too."

"But you didn't go to an island," said the Savage, breakinga long silence.

The Controller smiled. "That's how I paid. By choosing toserve happiness. Other people's–not mine. It's lucky," headded, after a pause, "that there are such a lot of islandsin the world. I don't know what we should do without them.Put you all in the lethal chamber, I suppose. By the way,Mr. Watson, would you like a tropical climate? TheMarquesas, for example; or Samoa? Or something rather morebracing?"

Helmholtz rose from his pneumatic chair. "I should like athoroughly bad climate," he answered. "I believe one wouldwrite better if the climate were bad. If there were a lot ofwind and storms, for example …"

The Controller nodded his approbation. "I like your spirit,Mr. Watson. I like it very much indeed. As much as Iofficially disapprove of it." He smiled. "What about theFalkland Islands?"

"Yes, I think that will do," Helmholtz answered. "And now,if you don't mind, I'll go and see how poor Bernard'sgetting on."


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

ART, SCIENCE–you seem to have paid a fairly high price foryour happiness," said the Savage, when they were alone."Anything else?"

"Well, religion, of course," replied the Controller. "Thereused to be something called God–before the Nine Years' War.But I was forgetting; you know all about God, I suppose."

"Well …" The Savage hesitated. He would have liked to saysomething about solitude, about night, about the mesa lyingpale under the moon, about the precipice, the plunge intoshadowy darkness, about death. He would have liked to speak;but there were no words. Not even in Shakespeare.

The Controller, meanwhile, had crossed to the other side ofthe room and was unlocking a large safe set into the wallbetween the bookshelves. The heavy door swung open.Rummaging in the darkness within, "It's a subject," he said,"that has always had a great interest for me." He pulled outa thick black volume. "You've never read this, for example."

The Savage took it. "The Holy Bible, containing the Old andNew Testaments," he read aloud from the title-page.

"Nor this." It was a small book and had lost its cover.

"The Imitation of Christ."

"Nor this." He handed out another volume.

"The Varieties of Religious Experience. By William James."

"And I've got plenty more," Mustapha Mond continued,resuming his seat. "A whole collection of pornographic oldbooks. God in the safe and Ford on the shelves." He pointedwith a laugh to his avowed library–to the shelves of books,the rack full of reading-machine bobbins and sound-trackrolls.

"But if you know about God, why don't you tell them?" askedthe Savage indignantly. "Why don't you give them these booksabout God?"

"For the same reason as we don't give them Othello: they'reold; they're about God hundreds of years ago. Not about Godnow."

"But God doesn't change."

"Men do, though."

"What difference does that make?"

"All the difference in the world," said Mustapha Mond. He


got up again and walked to the safe. "There was a man calledCardinal Newman," he said. "A cardinal," he exclaimedparenthetically, "was a kind of Arch-Community-Songster."

"'I Pandulph, of fair Milan, cardinal.' I've read about themin Shakespeare."

"Of course you have. Well, as I was saying, there was a mancalled Cardinal Newman. Ah, here's the book." He pulled itout. "And while I'm about it I'll take this one too. It's bya man called Maine de Biran. He was a philosopher, if youknow what that was."

"A man who dreams of fewer things than there are in heavenand earth," said the Savage promptly.

"Quite so. I'll read you one of the things he did dream ofin a moment. Meanwhile, listen to what this oldArch-Community-Songster said." He opened the book at theplace marked by a slip of paper and began to read. "'We arenot our own any more than what we possess is our own. We didnot make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. Weare not our own masters. We are God's property. Is it notour happiness thus to view the matter? Is it any happinessor any comfort, to consider that we are our own? It may bethought so by the young and prosperous. These may think it agreat thing to have everything, as they suppose, their ownway–to depend on no one–to have to think of nothing out ofsight, to be without the irksomeness of continualacknowledgment, continual prayer, continual reference ofwhat they do to the will of another. But as time goes on,they, as all men, will find that independence was not madefor man–that it is an unnatural state–will do for a while,but will not carry us on safely to the end …'" Mustapha Mondpaused, put down the first book and, picking up the other,turned over the pages. "Take this, for example," he said,and in his deep voice once more began to read: "'A man growsold; he feels in himself that radical sense of weakness, oflistlessness, of discomfort, which accompanies the advanceof age; and, feeling thus, imagines himself merely sick,lulling his fears with the notion that this distressingcondition is due to some particular cause, from which, asfrom an illness, he hopes to recover. Vain imaginings! Thatsickness is old age; and a horrible disease it is. They saythat it is the fear of death and of what comes after deaththat makes men turn to religion as they advance in years.But my own experience has given me the conviction that,quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, thereligious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; todevelop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy andsensibilities are less excited and less excitable, ourreason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscuredby the images, desires and distractions, in which it used tobe absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud;our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light;turns naturally and inevitably; for now that all that gaveto the world of sensations its life and charms has begun toleak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no morebolstered up by impressions from within or from without, wefeel the need to lean on something that abides, somethingthat will never play us false–a reality, an absolute andeverlasting truth. Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this


religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightfulto the soul that experiences it, that it makes up to us forall our other losses.'" Mustapha Mond shut the book andleaned back in his chair. "One of the numerous things inheaven and earth that these philosophers didn't dream aboutwas this" (he waved his hand), "us, the modern world. 'Youcan only be independent of God while you've got youth andprosperity; independence won't take you safely to the end.'Well, we've now got youth and prosperity right up to theend. What follows? Evidently, that we can be independent ofGod. 'The religious sentiment will compensate us for all ourlosses.' But there aren't any losses for us to compensate;religious sentiment is superfluous. And why should we gohunting for a substitute for youthful desires, when youthfuldesires never fail? A substitute for distractions, when wego on enjoying all the old fooleries to the very last? Whatneed have we of repose when our minds and bodies continue todelight in activity? of consolation, when we have soma? ofsomething immovable, when there is the social order?"

"Then you think there is no God?"

"No, I think there quite probably is one."

"Then why? …"

Mustapha Mond checked him. "But he manifests himself indifferent ways to different men. In premodern times hemanifested himself as the being that's described in thesebooks. Now …"

"How does he manifest himself now?" asked the Savage.

"Well, he manifests himself as an absence; as though heweren't there at all."

"That's your fault."

"Call it the fault of civilization. God isn't compatiblewith machinery and scientific medicine and universalhappiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization haschosen machinery and medicine and happiness. That's why Ihave to keep these books locked up in the safe. They'resmut. People would be shocked it …"

The Savage interrupted him. "But isn't it natural to feelthere's a God?"

"You might as well ask if it's natural to do up one'strousers with zippers," said the Controller sarcastically."You remind me of another of those old fellows calledBradley. He defined philosophy as the finding of bad reasonfor what one believes by instinct. As if one believedanything by instinct! One believes things because one hasbeen conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons forwhat one believes for other bad reasons–that's philosophy.People believe in God because they've been conditioned to.

"But all the same," insisted the Savage, "it is natural tobelieve in God when you're alone–quite alone, in the night,


thinking about death …"

"But people never are alone now," said Mustapha Mond. "Wemake them hate solitude; and we arrange their lives so thatit's almost impossible for them ever to have it."

The Savage nodded gloomily. At Malpais he had sufferedbecause they had shut him out from the communal activitiesof the pueblo, in civilized London he was suffering becausehe could never escape from those communal activities, neverbe quietly alone.

"Do you remember that bit in King Lear?" said the Savage atlast. "'The gods are just and of our pleasant vices makeinstruments to plague us; the dark and vicious place wherethee he got cost him his eyes,' and Edmund answers–youremember, he's wounded, he's dying–'Thou hast spoken right;'tis true. The wheel has come full circle; I am here.' Whatabout that now? Doesn't there seem to be a God managingthings, punishing, rewarding?"

"Well, does there?" questioned the Controller in his turn."You can indulge in any number of pleasant vices with afreemartin and run no risks of having your eyes put out byyour son's mistress. 'The wheel has come full circle; I amhere.' But where would Edmund be nowadays? Sitting in apneumatic chair, with his arm round a girl's waist, suckingaway at his sex-hormone chewing-gum and looking at thefeelies. The gods are just. No doubt. But their code of lawis dictated, in the last resort, by the people who organizesociety; Providence takes its cue from men."

"Are you sure?" asked the Savage. "Are you quite sure thatthe Edmund in that pneumatic chair hasn't been just asheavily punished as the Edmund who's wounded and bleeding todeath? The gods are just. Haven't they used his pleasantvices as an instrument to degrade him?"

"Degrade him from what position? As a happy, hard-working,goods-consuming citizen he's perfect. Of course, if youchoose some other standard than ours, then perhaps you mightsay he was degraded. But you've got to stick to one set ofpostulates. You can't play Electro-magnetic Golf accordingto the rules of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy."

"But value dwells not in particular will," said the Savage."It holds his estimate and dignity as well wherein 'tisprecious of itself as in the prizer."

"Come, come," protested Mustapha Mond, "that's going ratherfar, isn't it?"

"If you allowed yourselves to think of God, you wouldn'tallow yourselves to be degraded by pleasant vices. You'dhave a reason for bearing things patiently, for doing thingswith courage. I've seen it with the Indians."

"l'm sure you have," said Mustapha Mond. "But then we aren'tIndians. There isn't any need for a civilized man to bearanything that's seriously unpleasant. And as for doingthings–Ford forbid that he should get the idea into his


head. It would upset the whole social order if men starteddoing things on their own."

"What about self-denial, then? If you had a God, you'd havea reason for self-denial."

"But industrial civilization is only possible when there'sno self-denial. Self-indulgence up to the very limitsimposed by hygiene and economics. Otherwise the wheels stopturning."

"You'd have a reason for chastity!" said the Savage,blushing a little as he spoke the words.

"But chastity means passion, chastity means neurasthenia.And passion and neurasthenia mean instability. Andinstability means the end of civilization. You can't have alasting civilization without plenty of pleasant vices."

"But God's the reason for everything noble and fine andheroic. If you had a God …"

"My dear young friend," said Mustapha Mond, "civilizationhas absolutely no need of nobility or heroism. These thingsare symptoms of political inefficiency. In a properlyorganized society like ours, nobody has any opportunitiesfor being noble or heroic. Conditions have got to bethoroughly unstable before the occasion can arise. Wherethere are wars, where there are divided allegiances, wherethere are temptations to be resisted, objects of love to befought for or defended–there, obviously, nobility andheroism have some sense. But there aren't any wars nowadays.The greatest care is taken to prevent you from loving anyone too much. There's no such thing as a divided allegiance;you're so conditioned that you can't help doing what youought to do. And what you ought to do is on the whole sopleasant, so many of the natural impulses are allowed freeplay, that there really aren't any temptations to resist.And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasantshould somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give youa holiday from the facts. And there's always soma to calmyour anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make youpatient and long-suffering. In the past you could onlyaccomplish these things by making a great effort and afteryears of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or threehalf-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can bevirtuous now. You can carry at least half your mortalityabout in a bottle. Christianity without tears–that's whatsoma is."

"But the tears are necessary. Don't you remember whatOthello said? 'If after every tempest came such calms, maythe winds blow till they have wakened death.' There's astory one of the old Indians used to tell us, about the Girlof Mátaski. The young men who wanted to marry her had to doa morning's hoeing in her garden. It seemed easy; but therewere flies and mosquitoes, magic ones. Most of the young mensimply couldn't stand the biting and stinging. But the onethat could–he got the girl."

"Charming! But in civilized countries," said the Controller,


"you can have girls without hoeing for them, and therearen't any flies or mosquitoes to sting you. We got rid ofthem all centuries ago."

The Savage nodded, frowning. "You got rid of them. Yes,that's just like you. Getting rid of everything unpleasantinstead of learning to put up with it. Whether 'tis betterin the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageousfortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and byopposing end them … But you don't do either. Neither suffernor oppose. You just abolish the slings and arrows. It's tooeasy."

He was suddenly silent, thinking of his mother. In her roomon the thirty-seventh floor, Linda had floated in a sea ofsinging lights and perfumed caresses–floated away, out ofspace, out of time, out of the prison of her memories, herhabits, her aged and bloated body. And Tomakin, ex-Directorof Hatcheries and Conditioning, Tomakin was still onholiday–on holiday from humiliation and pain, in a worldwhere he could not hear those words, that derisive laughter,could not see that hideous face, feel those moist and flabbyarms round his neck, in a beautiful world …

"What you need," the Savage went on, "is something withtears for a change. Nothing costs enough here."

("Twelve and a half million dollars," Henry Foster hadprotested when the Savage told him that. "Twelve and a halfmillion–that's what the new Conditioning Centre cost. Not acent less.")

"Exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune,death and danger dare, even for an eggshell. Isn't theresomething in that?" he asked, looking up at Mustapha Mond."Quite apart from God–though of course God would be a reasonfor it. Isn't there something in living dangerously?"

"There's a great deal in it," the Controller replied. "Menand women must have their adrenals stimulated from time totime."

"What?" questioned the Savage, uncomprehending.

"It's one of the conditions of perfect health. That's whywe've made the V.P.S. treatments compulsory."

"V.P.S.?"

"Violent Passion Surrogate. Regularly once a month. We floodthe whole system with adrenin. It's the completephysiological equivalent of fear and rage. All the toniceffects of murdering Desdemona and being murdered byOthello, without any of the inconveniences."

"But I like the inconveniences."

"We don't," said the Controller. "We prefer to do thingscomfortably."

"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want


real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."

"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right tobe unhappy."

"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claimingthe right to be unhappy."

"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent;the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have toolittle to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live inconstant apprehension of what may happen to-morrow; theright to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured byunspeakable pains of every kind." There was a long silence.

"I claim them all," said the Savage at last.

Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. "You're welcome," hesaid.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE DOOR was ajar; they entered.

"John!"

From the bathroom came an unpleasant and characteristicsound.

"Is there anything the matter?" Helmholtz called.

There was no answer. The unpleasant sound was repeated,twice; there was silence. Then, with a click the bathroomdoor opened and, very pale, the Savage emerged.

"I say," Helmholtz exclaimed solicitously, "you do look ill,John!"

"Did you eat something that didn't agree with you?" askedBernard.

The Savage nodded. "I ate civilization."

"What?"

"It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then," he added, in alower tone, "I ate my own wickedness."

"Yes, but what exactly? … I mean, just now you were …"

"Now I am purified," said the Savage. "I drank some mustardand warm water."

The others stared at him in astonishment. "Do you mean tosay that you were doing it on purpose?" asked Bernard.

"That's how the Indians always purify themselves." He satdown and, sighing, passed his hand across his forehead. "Ishall rest for a few minutes," he said. "I'm rather tired."


"Well, I'm not surprised," said Helmholtz. After a silence,"We've come to say good-bye," he went on in another tone."We're off to-morrow morning."

"Yes, we're off to-morrow," said Bernard on whose face theSavage remarked a new expression of determined resignation."And by the way, John," he continued, leaning forward in hischair and laying a hand on the Savage's knee, "I want to sayhow sorry I am about everything that happened yesterday." Heblushed. "How ashamed," he went on, in spite of theunsteadiness of his voice, "how really …"

The Savage cut him short and, taking his hand,affectionately pressed it.

"Helmholtz was wonderful to me," Bernard resumed, after alittle pause. "If it hadn't been for him, I should …"

"Now, now," Helmholtz protested.

There was a silence. In spite of their sadness–because ofit, even; for their sadness was the symptom of their lovefor one another–the three young men were happy.

"I went to see the Controller this morning," said the Savageat last.

"What for?"

"To ask if I mightn't go to the islands with you."

"And what did he say?" asked Helmholtz eagerly.

The Savage shook his head. "He wouldn't let me."

"Why not?"

"He said he wanted to go on with the experiment. But I'mdamned," the Savage added, with sudden fury, "I'm damned ifI'll go on being experimented with. Not for all theControllers in the world. l shall go away to-morrow too."

"But where?" the others asked in unison.

The Savage shrugged his shoulders. "Anywhere. I don't care.So long as I can be alone."

From Guildford the down-line followed the Wey valley toGodalming, then, over Milford and Witley, proceeded toHaslemere and on through Petersfield towards Portsmouth.Roughly parallel to it, the upline passed over Worplesden,Tongham, Puttenham, Elstead and Grayshott. Between the Hog'sBack and Hindhead there were points where the two lines werenot more than six or seven kilometres apart. The distancewas too small for careless flyers–particularly at night andwhen they had taken half a gramme too much. There had beenaccidents. Serious ones. It had been decided to deflect theupline a few kilometres to the west. Between Grayshott andTongham four abandoned air-lighthouses marked the course ofthe old Portsmouth-to-London road. The skies above them weresilent and deserted. It was over Selborne, Bordon and


Farnham that the helicopters now ceaselessly hummed androared.

The Savage had chosen as his hermitage the old light-housewhich stood on the crest of the hill between Puttenham andElstead. The building was of ferro-concrete and in excellentcondition–almost too comfortable the Savage had thought whenhe first explored the place, almost too civilizedlyluxurious. He pacified his conscience by promising himself acompensatingly harder self-discipline, purifications themore complete and thorough. His first night in the hermitagewas, deliberately, a sleepless one. He spent the hours onhis knees praying, now to that Heaven from which the guiltyClaudius had begged forgiveness, now in Zuñi to Awonawilona,now to Jesus and Pookong, now to his own guardian animal,the eagle. From time to time he stretched out his arms asthough he were on the Cross, and held them thus through longminutes of an ache that gradually increased till it became atremulous and excruciating agony; held them, in voluntarycrucifixion, while he repeated, through clenched teeth (thesweat, meanwhile, pouring down his face), "Oh, forgive me!Oh, make me pure! Oh, help me to be good!" again and again,till he was on the point of fainting from the pain.

When morning came, he felt he had earned the right toinhabit the lighthouse; yet, even though there still wasglass in most of the windows, even though the view from theplatform was so fine. For the very reason why he had chosenthe lighthouse had become almost instantly a reason forgoing somewhere else. He had decided to live there becausethe view was so beautiful, because, from his vantage point,he seemed to be looking out on to the incarnation of adivine being. But who was he to be pampered with the dailyand hourly sight of loveliness? Who was he to be living inthe visible presence of God? All he deserved to live in wassome filthy sty, some blind hole in the ground. Stiff andstill aching after his long night of pain, but for that veryreason inwardly reassured, he climbed up to the platform ofhis tower, he looked out over the bright sunrise world whichhe had regained the right to inhabit. On the north the viewwas bounded by the long chalk ridge of the Hog's Back, frombehind whose eastern extremity rose the towers of the sevenskyscrapers which constituted Guildford. Seeing them, theSavage made a grimace; but he was to become reconciled tothem in course of time; for at night they twinkled gailywith geometrical constellations, or else, flood-lighted,pointed their luminous fingers (with a gesture whosesignificance nobody in England but the Savage nowunderstood) solemnly towards the plumbless mysteries ofheaven.

In the valley which separated the Hog's Back from the sandyhill on which the lighthouse stood, Puttenham was a modestlittle village nine stories high, with silos, a poultryfarm, and a small vitamin-D factory. On the other side ofthe lighthouse, towards the South, the ground fell away inlong slopes of heather to a chain of ponds.

Beyond them, above the intervening woods, rose thefourteen-story tower of Elstead. Dim in the hazy Englishair, Hindhead and Selborne invited the eye into a blueromantic distance. But it was not alone the distance that


had attracted the Savage to his lighthouse; the near was asseductive as the far. The woods, the open stretches ofheather and yellow gorse, the clumps of Scotch firs, theshining ponds with their overhanging birch trees, theirwater lilies, their beds of rushes–these were beautiful and,to an eye accustomed to the aridities of the Americandesert, astonishing. And then the solitude! Whole dayspassed during which he never saw a human being. Thelighthouse was only a quarter of an hour's flight from theCharing-T Tower; but the hills of Malpais were hardly moredeserted than this Surrey heath. The crowds that daily leftLondon, left it only to play Electro-magnetic Golf orTennis. Puttenham possessed no links; the nearestRiemann-surfaces were at Guildford. Flowers and a landscapewere the only attractions here. And so, as there was no goodreason for coming, nobody came. During the first days theSavage lived alone and undisturbed.

Of the money which, on his first arrival, John had receivedfor his personal expenses, most had been spent on hisequipment. Before leaving London he had bought fourviscose-woollen blankets, rope and string, nails, glue, afew tools, matches (though he intended in due course to makea fire drill), some pots and pans, two dozen packets ofseeds, and ten kilogrammes of wheat flour. "No, notsynthetic starch and cotton-waste flour-substitute," he hadinsisted. "Even though it is more nourishing." But when itcame to pan-glandular biscuits and vitaminizedbeef-surrogate, he had not been able to resist the shopman'spersuasion. Looking at the tins now, he bitterly reproachedhimself for his weakness. Loathesome civilized stuff! He hadmade up his mind that he would never eat it, even if he werestarving. "That'll teach them," he thought vindictively. Itwould also teach him.

He counted his money. The little that remained would beenough, he hoped, to tide him over the winter. By nextspring, his garden would be producing enough to make himindependent of the outside world. Meanwhile, there wouldalways be game. He had seen plenty of rabbits, and therewere waterfowl on the ponds. He set to work at once to makea bow and arrows.

There were ash trees near the lighthouse and, for arrowshafts, a whole copse full of beautifully straight hazelsaplings. He began by felling a young ash, cut out six feetof unbranched stem, stripped off the bark and, paring byparing, shaved away the white wood, as old Mitsima hadtaught him, until he had a stave of his own height, stiff atthe thickened centre, lively and quick at the slender tips.The work gave him an intense pleasure. After those weeks ofidleness in London, with nothing to do, whenever he wantedanything, but to press a switch or turn a handle, it waspure delight to be doing something that demanded skill andpatience.

He had almost finished whittling the stave into shape, whenhe realized with a start that he was singing-singing! It wasas though, stumbling upon himself from the outside, he hadsuddenly caught himself out, taken himself flagrantly atfault. Guiltily he blushed. After all, it was not to sing


and enjoy himself that he had come here. It was to escapefurther contamination by the filth of civilized life; it wasto be purified and made good; it was actively to makeamends. He realized to his dismay that, absorbed in thewhittling of his bow, he had forgotten what he had sworn tohimself he would constantly remember–poor Linda, and his ownmurderous unkindness to her, and those loathsome twins,swarming like lice across the mystery of her death,insulting, with their presence, not merely his own grief andrepentance, but the very gods themselves. He had sworn toremember, he had sworn unceasingly to make amends. And therewas he, sitting happily over his bow-stave, singing,actually singing. …

He went indoors, opened the box of mustard, and put somewater to boil on the fire.

Half an hour later, three Delta-Minus landworkers from oneof the Puttenham Bokanovsky Groups happened to be driving toElstead and, at the top of the hill, were astonished to seea young man standing 0utside the abandoned lighthousestripped to the waist and hitting himself with a whip ofknotted cords. His back was horizontally streaked withcrimson, and from weal to weal ran thin trickles of blood.The driver of the lorry pulled up at the side of the roadand, with his two companions, stared open-mouthed at theextraordinary spectacle. One, two three–they counted thestrokes. After the eighth, the young man interrupted hisself-punishment to run to the wood's edge and there beviolently sick. When he had finished, he picked up the whipand began hitting himself again. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve …

"Ford!" whispered the driver. And his twins were of the sameopinion.

"Fordey!" they said.

Three days later, like turkey buzzards settling on a corpse,the reporters came.

Dried and hardened over a slow fire of green wood, the bowwas ready. The Savage was busy on his arrows. Thirty hazelsticks had been whittled and dried, tipped with sharp nails,carefully nocked. He had made a raid one night on thePuttenham poultry farm, and now had feathers enough to equipa whole armoury. It was at work upon the feathering of hisshafts that the first of the reporters found him. Noiselesson his pneumatic shoes, the man came up behind him.

"Good-morning, Mr. Savage," he said. "I am therepresentative of The Hourly Radio."

Startled as though by the bite of a snake, the Savage sprangto his feet, scattering arrows, feathers, glue-pot and brushin all directions.

"I beg your pardon," said the reporter, with genuinecompunction. "I had no intention …" He touched his hat–thealuminum stove-pipe hat in which he carried his wirelessreceiver and transmitter. "Excuse my not taking it off," he


said. "It's a bit heavy. Well, as I was saying, I am therepresentative of The Hourly …"

"What do you want?" asked the Savage, scowling. The reporterreturned his most ingratiating smile.

"Well, of course, our readers would be profoundly interested…" He put his head on one side, his smile became almostcoquettish. "Just a few words from you, Mr. Savage." Andrapidly, with a series of ritual gestures, he uncoiled twowires connected to the portable battery buckled round hiswaist; plugged them simultaneously into the sides of hisaluminum hat; touched a spring on the crown–and antennæ shotup into the air; touched another spring on the peak of thebrim–and, like a jack-in-the-box, out jumped a microphoneand hung there, quivering, six inches in front of his nose;pulled down a pair of receivers over his ears; pressed aswitch on the left side of the hat-and from within came afaint waspy buzzing; turned a knob on the right–and thebuzzing was interrupted by a stethoscopic wheeze and cackle,by hiccoughs and sudden squeaks. "Hullo," he said to themicrophone, "hullo, hullo …" A bell suddenly rang inside hishat. "Is that you, Edzel? Primo Mellon speaking. Yes, I'vegot hold of him. Mr. Savage will now take the microphone andsay a few words. Won't you, Mr. Savage?" He looked up at theSavage with another of those winning smiles of his. "Justtell our readers why you came here. What made you leaveLondon (hold on, Edzel!) so very suddenly. And, of course,that whip." (The Savage started. How did they know about thewhip?) "We're all crazy to know about the whip. And thensomething about Civilization. You know the sort of stuff.'What I think of the Civilized Girl.' Just a few words, avery few …"

The Savage obeyed with a disconcerting literalness. Fivewords he uttered and no more-five words, the same as thosehe had said to Bernard about the Arch-Community-Songster ofCanterbury. "Háni! Sons éso tse-ná!" And seizing thereporter by the shoulder, he spun him round (the young manrevealed himself invitingly well-covered), aimed and, withall the force and accuracy of a championfoot-and-mouth-baller, delivered a most prodigious kick.

Eight minutes later, a new edition of The Hourly Radio wason sale in the streets of London. "HOURLY RADIO REPORTER HASCOCCYX KICKED BY MYSTERY SAVAGE," ran the headlines on thefront page. "SENSATION IN SURREY."

"Sensation even in London," thought the reporter when, onhis return, he read the words. And a very painful sensation,what was more. He sat down gingerly to his luncheon.

Undeterred by that cautionary bruise on their colleague'scoccyx, four other reporters, representing the New YorkTimes, the Frankfurt Four-Dimensional Continuum, The FordianScience Monitor, and The Delta Mirror, called that afternoonat the lighthouse and met with receptions of progressivelyincreasing violence.


From a safe distance and still rubbing his buttocks,"Benighted fool!" shouted the man from The Fordian ScienceMonitor, "why don't you take soma?"

"Get away!" The Savage shook his fist.

The other retreated a few steps then turned round again."Evil's an unreality if you take a couple of grammes."

"Kohakwa iyathtokyai!" The tone was menacingly derisive.

"Pain's a delusion."

"Oh, is it?" said the Savage and, picking up a thick hazelswitch, strode forward.

The man from The Fordian Science Monitor made a dash for hishelicopter.

After that the Savage was left for a time in peace. A fewhelicopters came and hovered inquisitively round the tower.He shot an arrow into the importunately nearest of them. Itpierced the aluminum floor of the cabin; there was a shrillyell, and the machine went rocketing up into the air withall the acceleration that its super-charger could give it.The others, in future, kept their distance respectfully.Ignoring their tiresome humming (he likened himself in hisimagination to one of the suitors of the Maiden of Mátsaki,unmoved and persistent among the winged vermin), the Savagedug at what was to be his garden. After a time the verminevidently became bored and flew away; for hours at a stretchthe sky above his head was empty and, but for the larks,silent.

The weather was breathlessly hot, there was thunder in theair. He had dug all the morning and was resting, stretchedout along the floor. And suddenly the thought of Lenina wasa real presence, naked and tangible, saying "Sweet!" and"Put your arms round me!"–in shoes and socks, perfumed.Impudent strumpet! But oh, oh, her arms round his neck, thelifting of her breasts, her mouth! Eternity was in our lipsand eyes. Lenina … No, no, no, no! He sprang to his feetand, half naked as he was, ran out of the house. At the edgeof the heath stood a clump of hoary juniper bushes. He flunghimself against them, he embraced, not the smooth body ofhis desires, but an armful of green spikes. Sharp, with athousand points, they pricked him. He tried to think of poorLinda, breathless and dumb, with her clutching hands and theunutterable terror in her eyes. Poor Linda whom he had swornto remember. But it was still the presence of Lenina thathaunted him. Lenina whom he had promised to forget. Eventhrough the stab and sting of the juniper needles, hiswincing flesh was aware of her, unescapably real. "Sweet,sweet … And if you wanted me too, why didn't you …"

The whip was hanging on a nail by the door, ready to handagainst the arrival of reporters. In a frenzy the Savage ranback to the house, seized it, whirled it. The knotted cordsbit into his flesh.


"Strumpet! Strumpet!" he shouted at every blow as though itwere Lenina (and how frantically, without knowing it, hewished it were), white, warm, scented, infamous Lenina thathe was dogging thus. "Strumpet!" And then, in a voice ofdespair, "Oh, Linda, forgive me. Forgive me, God. I'm bad.I'm wicked. I'm … No, no, you strumpet, you strumpet!"

From his carefully constructed hide in the wood threehundred metres away, Darwin Bonaparte, the FeelyCorporation's most expert big game photographer had watchedthe whole proceedings. Patience and skill had been rewarded.He had spent three days sitting inside the bole of anartificial oak tree, three nights crawling on his bellythrough the heather, hiding microphones in gorse bushes,burying wires in the soft grey sand. Seventy-two hours ofprofound discomfort. But now me great moment had come–thegreatest, Darwin Bonaparte had time to reflect, as he movedamong his instruments, the greatest since his taking of thefamous all-howling stereoscopic feely of the gorillas'wedding. "Splendid," he said to himself, as the Savagestarted his astonishing performance. "Splendid!" He kept histelescopic cameras carefully aimed–glued to their movingobjective; clapped on a higher power to get a close-up ofthe frantic and distorted face (admirable!); switched over,for half a minute, to slow motion (an exquisitely comicaleffect, he promised himself); listened in, meanwhile, to theblows, the groans, the wild and raving words that were beingrecorded on the sound-track at the edge of his film, triedthe effect of a little amplification (yes, that wasdecidedly better); was delighted to hear, in a momentarylull, the shrill singing of a lark; wished the Savage wouldturn round so that he could get a good close-up of the bloodon his back–and almost instantly (what astonishing luck!)the accommodating fellow did turn round, and he was able totake a perfect close-up.

"Well, that was grand!" he said to himself when it was allover. "Really grand!" He mopped his face. When they had putin the feely effects at the studio, it would be a wonderfulfilm. Almost as good, thought Darwin Bonaparte, as the SpermWhale's Love-Life–and that, by Ford, was saying a good deal!

Twelve days later The Savage of Surrey had been released andcould be seen, heard and felt in every first-classfeely-palace in Western Europe.

The effect of Darwin Bonaparte's film was immediate andenormous. On the afternoon which followed the evening of itsrelease John's rustic solitude was suddenly broken by thearrival overhead of a great swarm of helicopters.

He was digging in his garden–digging, too, in his own mind,laboriously turning up the substance of his thought.Death–and he drove in his spade once, and again, and yetagain. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way todusty death. A convincing thunder rumbled through the words.He lifted another spadeful of earth. Why had Linda died? Whyhad she been allowed to become gradually less than human andat last … He shuddered. A good kissing carrion. He plantedhis foot on his spade and stamped it fiercely into the tough


ground. As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; theykill us for their sport. Thunder again; words thatproclaimed themselves true–truer somehow than truth itself.And yet that same Gloucester had called them ever-gentlegods. Besides, thy best of rest is sleep and that thou oftprovok'st; yet grossly fear'st thy death which is no more.No more than sleep. Sleep. Perchance to dream. His spadestruck against a stone; he stooped to pick it up. For inthat sleep of death, what dreams? …

A humming overhead had become a roar; and suddenly he was inshadow, there was something between the sun and him. Helooked up, startled, from his digging, from his thoughts;looked up in a dazzled bewilderment, his mind stillwandering in that other world of truer-than-truth, stillfocused on the immensities of death and deity; looked up andsaw, close above him, the swarm of hovering machines. Likelocusts they came, hung poised, descended all around him onthe heather. And from out of the bellies of these giantgrasshoppers stepped men in white viscose-flannels, women(for the weather was hot) in acetate-shantung pyjamas orvelveteen shorts and sleeveless, half-unzipperedsinglets–one couple from each. In a few minutes there weredozens of them, standing in a wide circle round thelighthouse, staring, laughing, clicking their cameras,throwing (as to an ape) peanuts, packets of sex-hormonechewing-gum, pan-glandular petite beurres. And everymoment–for across the Hog's Back the stream of traffic nowflowed unceasingly–their numbers increased. As in anightmare, the dozens became scores, the scores hundreds.

The Savage had retreated towards cover, and now, in theposture of an animal at bay, stood with his back to the wallof the lighthouse, staring from face to face in speechlesshorror, like a man out of his senses.

From this stupor he was aroused to a more immediate sense ofreality by the impact on his cheek of a well-aimed packet ofchewing-gum. A shock of startling pain–and he was broadawake, awake and fiercely angry.

"Go away!" he shouted.

The ape had spoken; there was a burst of laughter andhand-clapping. "Good old Savage! Hurrah, hurrah!" Andthrough the babel he heard cries of: "Whip, whip, the whip!"

Acting on the word's suggestion, he seized the bunch ofknotted cords from its nail behind the door and shook it athis tormentors.

There was a yell of ironical applause.

Menacingly he advanced towards them. A woman cried out infear. The line wavered at its most immediately threatenedpoint, then stiffened again, stood firm. The consciousnessof being in overwhelming force had given these sightseers acourage which the Savage had not expected of them. Takenaback, he halted and looked round.

"Why don't you leave me alone?" There was an almost


plaintive note in his anger.

"Have a few magnesium-salted almonds!" said the man who, ifthe Savage were to advance, would be the first to beattacked. He held out a packet. "They're really very good,you know," he added, with a rather nervous smile ofpropitiation. "And the magnesium salts will help to keep youyoung."

The Savage ignored his offer. "What do you want with me?" heasked, turning from one grinning face to another. "What doyou want with me?"

"The whip," answered a hundred voices confusedly. "Do thewhipping stunt. Let's see the whipping stunt."

Then, in unison and on a slow, heavy rhythm, "We-want-thewhip," shouted a group at the end of the line. "We–want–thewhip."

Others at once took up the cry, and the phrase was repeated,parrot-fashion, again and again, with an ever-growing volumeof sound, until, by the seventh or eighth reiteration, noother word was being spoken. "We–want–the whip."

They were all crying together; and, intoxicated by thenoise, the unanimity, the sense of rhythmical atonement,they might, it seemed, have gone on for hours-almostindefinitely. But at about the twenty-fifth repetition theproceedings were startlingly interrupted. Yet anotherhelicopter had arrived from across the Hog's Back, hungpoised above the crowd, then dropped within a few yards ofwhere the Savage was standing, in the open space between theline of sightseers and the lighthouse. The roar of the airscrews momentarily drowned the shouting; then, as themachine touched the ground and the engines were turned off:"We–want–the whip; we–want–the whip," broke out again in thesame loud, insistent monotone.

The door of the helicopter opened, and out stepped, first afair and ruddy-faced young man, then, in green velveteenshorts, white shirt, and jockey cap, a young woman.

At the sight of the young woman, the Savage started,recoiled, turned pale.

The young woman stood, smiling at him–an uncertain,imploring, almost abject smile. The seconds passed. Her lipsmoved, she was saying something; but the sound of her voicewas covered by the loud reiterated refrain of thesightseers.

"We–want–the whip! We–want–the whip!"

The young woman pressed both hands to her left side, and onthat peach-bright, doll-beautiful face of hers appeared astrangely incongruous expression of yearning distress. Herblue eyes seemed to grow larger, brighter; and suddenly twotears rolled down her cheeks. Inaudibly, she spoke again;then, with a quick, impassioned gesture stretched out herarms towards the Savage, stepped forward.


"We–want–the whip! We–want …"

And all of a sudden they had what they wanted.

"Strumpet!" The Savage had rushed at her like a madman."Fitchew!" Like a madman, he was slashing at her with hiswhip of small cords.

Terrified, she had turned to flee, had tripped and fallen inthe heather. "Henry, Henry!" she shouted. But herruddy-faced companion had bolted out of harm's way behindthe helicopter.

With a whoop of delighted excitement the line broke; therewas a convergent stampede towards that magnetic centre ofattraction. Pain was a fascinating horror.

"Fry, lechery, fry!" Frenzied, the Savage slashed again.

Hungrily they gathered round, pushing and scrambling likeswine about the trough.

"Oh, the flesh!" The Savage ground his teeth. This time itwas on his shoulders that the whip descended. "Kill it, killit!"

Drawn by the fascination of the horror of pain and, fromwithin, impelled by that habit of cooperation, that desirefor unanimity and atonement, which their conditioning had soineradicably implanted in them, they began to mime thefrenzy of his gestures, striking at one another as theSavage struck at his own rebellious flesh, or at that plumpincarnation of turpitude writhing in the heather at hisfeet.

"Kill it, kill it, kill it …" The Savage went on shouting.

Then suddenly somebody started singing "Orgy-porgy" and, ina moment, they had all caught up the refrain and, singing,had begun to dance. Orgy-porgy, round and round and round,beating one another in six-eight time. Orgy-porgy …

It was after midnight when the last of the helicopters tookits flight. Stupefied by soma, and exhausted by a long-drawnfrenzy of sensuality, the Savage lay sleeping in theheather. The sun was already high when he awoke. He lay fora moment, blinking in owlish incomprehension at the light;then suddenly remembered–everything.

"Oh, my God, my God!" He covered his eyes with his hand.

That evening the swarm of helicopters that came buzzingacross the Hog's Back was a dark cloud ten kilometres long.The description of last night's orgy of atonement had beenin all the papers.

"Savage!" called the first arrivals, as they alighted fromtheir machine. "Mr. Savage!"

There was no answer.


The door of the lighthouse was ajar. They pushed it open andwalked into a shuttered twilight. Through an archway on thefurther side of the room they could see the bottom of thestaircase that led up to the higher floors. Just under thecrown of the arch dangled a pair of feet.

"Mr. Savage!"

Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, thefeet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east,south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and, aftera few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left.South-south-west, south, south-east, east. …

[ End Of File ]

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